Mandy Patinkin Quotations

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

My dream has come true, now that I have passed it on.

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

It's what Shakespeare's mission was - to illuminate our thoughts and struggles and bring about the possibility of getting the most we can out of a day as opposed to least in this brief moment we're here.

I'm not frightened about terrorism. I'm frightened about the roots of what we call terrorism.

The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do 'Criminal Minds' in the first place.

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

I wanted to go to a liberal arts college, I wanted to have that experience.

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.

Sondheim is the Shakespeare of the musical theater world.

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.

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

I'm an obsessive hiker and I do it every day for two hours and it really helps me when it comes to learning songs or scripts.

People on both sides of any conflict believe they are right, whether it's on a TV show or in the real world.

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

I have the strength from my mother, the survivability. I have wonderful qualities from my mother - but please, Mother, forgive me - I heard judgment constantly about my father.

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 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.

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

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

I would go to war with words, not weapons. I would die talking before I lifted a weapon.

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

Isaac and I are going to Israel to ride for peace enviromental justice and a safer world for us all.

Music is my balance... center of my life.

I have no problem with violence, I have no problem playing horrible people.

Singing on the concert stage is the freest form, my favorite thing in the world,

I guess I am sometimes over the top on stage, but then, that is my personality. I'm over the top in real life, too.

I don't know what's going to happen in life, so I don't think it's fair that I know what's going to happen in 'Homeland.'

I belong on the stage. I love how the day's events, whatever you read in the newspapers or watch on the TV, are reflected in the performance and how it's received.

I'm a Jew. I'm fascinated by our culture and our history, by what made us the people we are. It influences every breath I take. It informs and guides me. Without it, I'd just be a vacuum.

I have never been asked to be in a movie musical. Other than 'Yentl,' which I didn't sing in.

If a movie musical came along and the part was right and somebody wanted me to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat.

I still have the sword of Inigo Montoya - it's mine!

We did a different show every night. We'd open a show, and then two weeks later we'd open the next show. And two weeks later we'd open the third show until we had all eight running. And it was just one of the richest experiences I'd ever had in my theatrical life.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

The songs I love to sing are story songs, from Yiddish songs to Tom Waits.

I've always been someone who some people like and some people don't like.

I never publicise in advance what I'm going to be singing because I never quite know until I start. I often change my mind halfway through. I sometimes throw in stuff about politics or Shakespeare or do songs in Yiddish.

In the hands of good writers, you have the opportunity to present both sides of an opinion equally and that you leave it to the audience to listen and then make up their own minds.

I plan on doing at least one classic ever year. That's why I'm going to be doing Enemy of the People this summer in Williamstown.

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.

I didn't think of myself as a singer. I'm an actor who recites words, and sometimes that happens to be on musical notes.

If I hear a lie in my life with my children, with my wife, my work, my audiences, I want to annihilate myself, vaporize myself and wipe myself off the face of the earth.

My life exists in an imagined reality.

So I'm truly an actor who sings, and not a singer who acts.

My mom was a great cook and great baker all her life.

Movies were a struggle for me - they didn't come easy.

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.

This is unbearable how I talk.

Everyone's entitled to their own experience.

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.

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.

There's not a lot of money in revenge.

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.

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.

You rarely pay the rent by doing Shakespeare or Ibsen.

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.

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.

When I'm on the road with concerts, people ask me to autograph my CDs, but more and more they come up with the cookbooks.

I'm a spiritual person, I'm an America, I'm a Jew, and all of those things influence every breath I take, everywhere I go.

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.

I'm an obsessive person. I like intensity.

Actually, the language in Shakespeare is wonderfully musical. You need to hear the music to connect with the words.

I can achieve that by personally relating the words that I am saying to something I have known in my life.

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

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

I moved to New York to go to Julliard Drama School. Didn't sing a single note of music.

I think it's fair to say I'm attracted to playing characters who are rather intense.

I try to say something about the human condition whenever I can when I'm lucky.

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.

My inner motivation is to make the world a better place; the bad guy and the good guy think the same thing.

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.

Everything I am came from my parents. I don't take that much credit for who I am and what I am.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHATS 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.

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.

I can't believe this, I'm arguing with a woman!

Now get in the cartoonishly evil vehicle and drive!

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

If you're sick, watch funny movies.

The great love of my life is music.

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 FEEL THE MOST ALIVE WHEN I'M SINGING. I ALSO GET TO BE THE MAIL MAN FOR SOME OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LYRICS EVER WRITTEN.

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.

Comparison leads to violence.

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

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

Mandy is not calm. So that's acting. I'm acting. And, and I love playing someone calm.

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.

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

I think we all lose in the end because we don't get to stay here forever.

Our actions are the ground we walk on.

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

Everything I experience influences everything I do.

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.

The great fun for me is these collaborators. I'm nothing by myself. Being with these people, whether it's the 'Homeland' cast or stage collaborators, they make you everything you are. They make you come to work. They make you be alive.

And all of those things: my religion, my politics, my family, my friends, the books I read, everywhere I travel - that influences everything I do.