Mandy Patinkin Quotes

I'm on the board of directors for Peace Now, which works tirelessly between the Palestinians and the Israelis to create peace in the Middle East and we've never been closer.

I believe there's a common ground in what all gifted writers write. It has to do with their wish to turn darkness into light.

Everything I experience influences everything I do.

I love my work, I love the people I work with, I do the best I can.

Sondheim is the Shakespeare of the musical theater world.

I've been very blessed in my personal life and in my career and I have never been ungrateful for what I have.

Our actions are the ground we walk on.

I try to get that across in the work, to try to, if I'm lucky, to make this world a little bit better for all of us before I check out. And that's if I'm lucky, I don't always get to have that privilege but I try always.

I'm blessed. I have a 13-year-old girl's eye and a 14 year-old boy's eye. I've been given the gift of sight by people who decided to donate organs. I try to do as much organ-donor work as I can.

I'm active in PAX, which is a gun awareness organization. We treat gun safety as a public health issue.

I grew up in Synagogue in the boys' choir. We didn't listen to music in the house; only at temple. Then I went to a mostly African American high school on the South Side of Chicago and joined a gospel choir.

No one is going to beat the crap out of me more than me.

Comparison leads to violence.

It is a game, the whole ball of wax is a game - your life, my life, politics, economy, hunger.

There's not a lot of money in revenge.

My sense of religion is Einstein's sense of relativity. I don't believe in God. I believe that energy never dies. So the possibility exists that you might be breathing in some other form of Moses or Buddha or Muhammad or Bobby Kennedy or Roosevelt or Martin Luther King or Jesus.

Who is the bad guy? Is America possibly the bad guy?

If you're sick, watch funny movies.

My wife will tell you that if you feel my hands before I walk on for a performance, you could chill a bottle of wine.

If you told me I could only do one thing, I would choose live concerts.

But I loved the theatre and I was just doing theatre 24/7 and kept dropping courses because I didn't have the time and the chancellor thought that wasn't a good idea after awhile.

When you work on a text of a lesser quality, as the interpreter or the delivery person, you are obliged to try to fill it out as you see so many people do in lesser work.

Well, I'm not a critic, I'm just a worker. So, I'm always grateful for anything the critics say - good or bad.

You rarely pay the rent by doing Shakespeare or Ibsen.

When I was your age, I used to treat the crust like it was just there to hold the good stuff in. I used to leave the whole back end of it on the plate. As I got older, I learned to appreciate the crust.

In my prayers every day, which are a combination of Hebrew prayers and Shakespeare and Sondheim lyrics and things people have said to me that I've written down and shoved in my pocket, I also say the name of every person I've ever known who's passed on.

People who go into the arts are often hurt people. Many are manic-depressive. Some have tried suicide and some have succeeded. It's just part of the game. We are people who are oversensitive. That's why we're in this business, because of our need to communicate.

Some teachers should be put in prison for the way they either take advantage of women in their classes or destroy fragile egos. Be careful who you ask to help you when you're in the arts.

I hope that something can be done in our piece that reflects on the attention that needs to be paid to the most vulnerable people, like refugees in the world right now, that have to not be politicized, but saved, literally.

Singing in Yiddish was a great thrill for me and came about through Joe Papp, the founder of The Public Theater.

During 'Chicago Hope,' I never let directors talk to me, because I was so spoiled. I started off with people like Milos Forman, Sidney Lumet, James Lapine, unbelievably gifted people. So there I was saying, 'Don't talk to me, I don't want your opinion.' I behaved abominably.

If we can't keep our Palestinian neighbors and Muslim neighbors alive with good water and fresh air, we'll never get them to the peace table.

I have no idea what's coming next or where it will come from; I enjoy the surprise of it all.

If you stand too close to a painting - all you see are patches of color, if you stand too far back, you can't see any of the detail.

The time it takes to get something done is the time it takes.

I want to protect everyone in the world, and I believe the way to protect them is to stop the killing universally. Create opportunity and better systems of living and existing, quality of life to humanity all over the world.

I got married because I wanted to do something that was more than I understood, because my feelings were more than I understood.

I'm Jewish and I can sing and I'm alive.

I'm just an actor. I am nothing special.

I'm lyrically driven, I'm not musically driven.

All great men usually are awakened by the great women in their lives. No matter what friction is there, if that relationship was there, that usually is their best friend, at the end of the day.

I don't want people to sit and process the song. I want them to just let them bathe over them.

Peace in the Middle East isn't going to be created by another war or violent act on the other side.

I'm so sad that I'm old enough to play, and I'm so grateful that I am. All that clichéd things, you really do learn something if you get the luck of being able to hang around. Even if it's a rough ride, you learn.

The great love of my life is music.

I desperately want to see the day today and do the best I can not miss a shred of sunlight. It'll be over before I know it.

The best work I can do is to take myself as much as I can out of it and get it as simple as I can.

There's something about singing that I just love. It makes me feel freer than anything in the world.

My life exists in an imagined reality.

One of the greatest gifts that 'Homeland' has given me is it's affirming on a daily basis.