Sometimes I feel like 'Avenue Q' or even 'Book of Mormon' might not have happened without 'Urinetown.' 'Urinetown' sort of paved the way, just in terms of what Broadway would accept in its houses. It just blows my mind, the stuff 'Book of Mormon' get...
I did a lot of musicals when I was young and finally went to drama school to try and get away from doing musicals... and of course the first thing that happened when I got out is I got offered a musical. And then when I got to the Royal Shakespeare C...
I'm not a prophet, but I always thought it was natural for dictatorships to fall. I remember in 1989, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, had you said it was going to happen no one would have believed you. The system seemed powerful and un...
In an ideal world, you could reunite the Pakistan-occupied part of Kashmir with the Indian-occupied part and restore the old borders. You could have both India and Pakistan agreeing to guarantee those borders, demilitarise the area, and to invest in ...
Any active sportsman has to be very focused; you've got to be in the right frame of mind. If your energy is diverted in various directions, you do not achieve the results. I need to know when to switch on and switch off: and the rest of the things ha...
It's basically taking a 911 call, bringing them on stage and dealing with it just like when I was a Chicago policeman for 12 years. I personally become involved. Where Jerry lets people tell their story and lets everything happen on stage, I kind of ...
Henry rubbed his balding head and yawned. “Why do I think this is worth the risk?…Because I think Betty knew this would one day happen...One time she even said she believed our own government would conspire with other nations to exterminate God�...
I believe that absolute objectivity does not exist. American journalists, although they try to be objective, always lean one way or another. They repeat and repeat a particular type of information, which ultimately creates a distorted image of realit...
My first kiss was with a girlfriend. And it was at a party. I think I was hopeful that that would happen, but I didn't plan it. You know, honestly, I think if there's a little too much planning, it's almost just like self-sabotage. Because then, you ...
Two questions form the foundation of all novels: "What if?" and "What next?" (A third question, "What now?", is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it's more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with the speculative question...
'Ice Cold' is the eighth in my 'Rizzoli and Isles' thriller series. It was inspired by a true occurrence in the 1960s, now known as the 'Dugway Incident,' in which 6,000 sheep mysteriously died overnight in a remote area of Utah. I thought, 'What if ...
Although this crisis in some ways started in the United States, it is a global crisis. We bear a substantial share of the responsibility for what has happened, but factors that made the crisis so acute and so difficult to contain lie in a broader set...
Nixon had been to China. He had been to Russia doing arms negotiation. And so, he was on his way toward what happened in November, which was an electoral win with 49 states. And the sheer unnecessariness of the Watergate break-in is something that mu...
An audience who watches my shows knows who I am, knows that right when they think I'm going to make a joke, I'm going to blow something up, or during the worst peril, I'm going to have someone give someone a kiss - it's just going to happen.
We not only heard it before 20 years ago, before George Bush in 2001 passed his tax relief, before in 2003 the tax relief were past, we were told they were dead. Before we provided prescription drugs for Medicare, we were told it wasn't going to happ...
What happened was, I always wanted to be a singer/songwriter kind of guy like a James Taylor or Crosby, Stills and Nash type of thing; I went to a lot of coffee houses and used to watch all those guys, but I never had the nerve to get up and do it be...
I say, "You a kind girl," and she nod, repeat it back to me. But before I can do another one, she get up and chase that poor dog around the yard and laugh and that's when I get to wondering, what would happen if I told her she something good, ever da...
With Catty and Patrick's images in he side mirror waving from the steps of that house like Jethro and Ellie Mae, it occurred to me that something extraordinary had happened. I had effortlessly found a place of acceptance -- a place where people had t...
Don’t give up on yourself. It’s incredibly cliche, but it’s true. The worst is yet to come if you give up on yourself. Hold yourself in high regard, and know that, though the ride may be bumpy and uncomfortable, there is a silver lining. You ha...
I think Ed Koch is the person most responsible for allowing AIDS to get out of control. It happened here first, on his watch. If he had done what any moral human being should have done in the beginning, and put out alarms, then a lot fewer people wou...
You will make it Liz, and no matter what happens down there, remember that I love you with everything I am, your life is my life, your pain is my pain, but my love is also your strength, and my faith your courage.