Harvey Fierstein quotes

“Pork was in 1971, and I stopped hanging out at The Factory by like 1973.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“Theater has to resonate in your heart in a way that movies don't.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“There are times when I don't take roles because I don't want to be perceived a certain way.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“To work all the time is to be incredibly lucky.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“To me, if a heterosexual has a right to do it, then I have a right to do it. And if it's important to the gay youth - who are now setting the agenda - then its important to me.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“It would be nice to redefine ourselves - at the moment we are drowning in diversity. That's not a bad thing, its just going to take a while before we refocus.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“I burned out on AIDS and did no AIDS work for a couple of years. I was so angry that people were still getting this disease that nobody can give you - you have to go out and get it!”

— Harvey Fierstein

“When I write stuff and I help cast it, I turn away good people all the time. I may turn them down because this one's too tall and that one doesn't have a high enough voice or this one looks to old to match up with that one - there's a billion reasons not to hire somebody.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“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.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“Anyone with a smart phone is a potential eyewitness cameraman capturing and transmitting stories at speeds that turn Reuter photos and traditional reporting into, well... yesterday's news.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“But actually just yesterday we raised the key of one of my songs two steps up, so my voice is obviously responding. It's a muscle, and the more you use it, the more you use it right, the more you should get out of it. So yes, I sing.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“But I'm not adverse to the idea of Torch Song as a musical. It would just be different. Because the play will always be there exactly as it was, and in a musical you could tell a lot of the story through songs.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“I actually may do a musical next year... not one that I've written; one that I may star in. Plus my concert and other people's work and all of a sudden you've got a very full life.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“I got the regular call, that they were doing a Broadway musical of Hairspray, and would I come and audition. I was familiar with the movie, because at the time it came out my lover wrote for Premiere magazine, and we had to see everything.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“I have to work really hard, eight shows a week, to get a nice check as an actor. But when I write a play, and it's a - knock wood - hit, the checks come in for many years.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“I'm sure there's going to be some material from This Is Not Going To Be Pretty. I usually use that song to just introduce myself to the audience, although the patter in between the song is always different.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“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.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“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.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“So, did I work with Warhol? I worked with him less on that play then I did on other things. He actually did a portrait of my rabbit and some other stuff. Warhol was definitely... Warhol.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“You know, I always got offered other stuff. Not the romantic leads, obviously. But very often it's a role that's underwritten, where the character has no personality at all. And they need a character actor who can fill it in.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“You really, really, really have to love what you are going to do in theater because it is an unmerciful life. It's six days a week. It's eight performances a week. And that's doing the exact same thing over and over and over again.”

— Harvey Fierstein