Harvey Fierstein

"Art has the power to transform, to illuminate, to educate, inspire and motivate."

"Also, if you want to reach people, theatre is not always the best way to do it."

"My play Safe Sex was picked apart because critics thought it was untrue. It was a play in which no one had AIDS, but the characters talked about how it was going to change their lives."

"What looks absolutely fabulous in rehearsal can fall flat in front of an audience. The audience dictates what you do or don't change."

"In Torch Song, I did that character almost non-stop from 1978 until I made the movie in 1987. Then I had some failure, which also colors how you react to doing other things."

"My father was brought up in an orphanage in the Catskills. He was a factory worker. And because his family wasn't there for him, family was everything. We could disagree inside the house, but outside the house it was us against the world. So when I became a drag actor, he looked sideways but said okay."