I was brought up very Catholic, and the character of Tommy Gnosis got his name from there.

Nowadays, the term 'selling out' doesn't exist anymore because everyone is trying to make a living.

You get all these French directors who have all these pretty, vacuous stars of their movies - from Jean Seberg on - who have become iconic but were never really good actors.

I would love for 'Hedwig' to be in every tiny shopping mall so every freakish kid like I was can have a broadening experience.

I quickly found that I didn't really fit into 'gay culture,' as identified by many gay people, and that it can be just as confining as straight culture, not least in the way that bisexual people are told that 'they can't make up their mind.'

The think that we hung the film version all on was 'Hedwig' on tour. On stage, it's one theatre, one show. It just seemed natural to change it. In the film, we were able to go to flashback rather than have her talk to the audience. And we had the play to practice and to see where we had made mistakes.

I thought, 'O.K., if I'm a valuable person and an independent entity, then I don't have to worry about what people think of me. I can reach out now.'

I think things are dishonest if they're not aware of sadness.

I certainly wanted Hedwig's world to be one where identification and categories are fluid, changing, and confusing, as they are, really, in life.

It's the weird thing that actors do: You jumped across that building because the scene required it.

My favorite model of success is when people say, 'Nobody bought that first Velvet Underground album, but everyone who did started a band.'

I realized that theater was the perfect thing for me, in short bursts of intense community building.

Chaos is the natural state, and theater tries to make sense of it, but it's got to be a little messy to be believable.

Humor without sadness underneath it feels cheap and aggressive.

I studied meditation, knowing it would be a huge new calming skill.

'Hedwig' is unabashedly analog.

I always think that in some way, art is the best tool we have to prepare for death. It's like a sculpture that you can interpret differently every time you look at it.

We're all weirdly single, middle-aged women with too much money who look to fill the void with too much shopping.

Nothing is a calling card. Everything is what you do. If you do it in order to get somewhere else, you're not actually doing it. If you're thinking, 'What is the weird thing I want to make with my friends?' money and other things will come later.

There's nothing more Broadway than 'Hedwig.' It's very family-friendly. There's innuendo and stuff, but not more than you'd see on TV.

Doing 'Hedwig' was so hard that I kind of burned out on acting.

Getting the blood moving through your body does do wonders for your complexion.

I went to theater school at Northwestern, and I was quite conservative. Reagan at the time seemed quite revolutionary, or at least a rock star: He was radical and kind of punk rock.

I'm an honorary old Jewish lady of the West Village.