“I hover closer to earth than I do the clouds.”
“I never had any trouble being myself. Myself was a problem for a lot of people, but I didn’t have a problem.”
“There is absolutely nothing that you can control except showing up and doing your job.”
“I’m a Pisces – I can’t rest if you aren’t resting well.”
“I think Donald Trump has put America in great danger, and I think he’s done a disservice to us even if he doesn’t win. I think his effect is going to be kind of lasting.”
“Life moves so fast, my friend. I am just lucky and happy to have the people I care about there along with me, watching all of this occur.”
“When I cook at home, most of the people I cook for want to be in the kitchen while I’m cooking. I love nothing more than someone monitoring how much salt I put into something, how much pepper I add – but nothing that you can offer is going to sway how I decide to deliver information to you; you’ll either receive it or you won’t.”
“When it’s your turn, it’s your turn. That’s just the way it is.”
“People have to work to maintain happiness. It’s easy to be miserable. It’s easy to stay miserable. It’s easy to live in a place where nothing’s working and not being able to work your way out of it. It’s much harder to choose happiness, to choose laughter, to choose a positive.”
“Here’s what I’m going to say about that: my personal thought about the brilliance of ‘Peeno Noir’ as proven by the fans’ appreciation is that, when watched back, what makes it so exciting is the random locations and the random costume changes and the multiple shots that we’ve done all over the city.”
“I feel most at home when I’m alone. That’s not sad. It’s just I feel closest to source and connection when I’m by myself.”
“The critics are not writers – they’re not a part of the creative process; therefore, they should not influence how I go about doing my next bit of work.”
“I tell you, my naps are epic. They win awards.”
“One thing about my dinner parties – they’re never planned. I go to the grocery store, and I buy whatever is on sale. I get a lot of it, and I just send out a mass text: ‘I just bought food. Dinner’s at 8. Text me if you’re coming.’”
“I make amazing fried chicken. The secret is taco seasoning.”
“I hate L.A. Can’t be bothered.”
“I can call up a friend and have them meet me for a drink in 20 minutes, and suddenly, the night unfolds into this glorious, uniquely New York situation. I wouldn’t give it up for the world.”
“Singing is how I express everything. Hunger, needing new clothes… it’s all through song.”
“I’ve always given attention to detail. I’ve always given my heart and soul into a lyric, into a line.”
“There is still a great deal of self-hatred that we refuse to deal with because we are still measuring ourselves against the norms of a masculine, heterosexual world. That is the backdrop with which we measure the man.”
“Ellie Kemper I just adore. She is such a warm, generous actor, and we have this wonderful rapport off camera, and that’s very important.”
“Carol Kane is just as warm as you would think she is, and she is so smart and really a living legend and has so much to offer.”
“I worked at Ruby Foos early on as a host. I was only there for a little bit, but I had several odd jobs to pay the bills before that. And being in New York for the first year, I got here in 2003, and it was a very exciting but very scary time not knowing how you would make ends meet and me trying to meet people.”
“On stage, everyone stays put; the vantage point is always the vantage point, and you have to play to the size of the house. And of course, on film, there’s different angles, different shots, so that determines how animated or how still you must be.”
“I don’t enjoy attention as much as people may think I do.”
“I feel like I’ve always had a sordid sense of humor, and it’s only gotten more twisted as I’ve gotten older.”
“I’ve always been weird.”
“I’m very much an introvert.”
“This is a fickle industry. Here today, gone tomorrow. I don’t want to spend all the time reflecting. I want to spend it doing.”
“Outside of the oppressive nature that the South offered to the black people, black gay people, black gay people who happened to be Christian, who wouldn’t want to leave? I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
“To somehow shrink so that you might be more comfortable is a foreign language to me. It’s a trait that I’ve never had. And that I hope I never, ever have.”
“When I got to New York, all I wanted to do – or so I thought – was win a Tony award or, at least, be nominated.”
“I don’t like flashy things.”
“I collect musical theatre anthologies. I have a whole library of them.”
“When I need to exorcise a demon, I grab whatever score is going to house the song I need to sing out of my system, and I sing it.”
“Personally, I’m very private, so when my door is closed, it means I’m unavailable, and when it’s open, it doesn’t mean you can come in.”
“I feel like communication is the same whether you’re cooking for someone or singing or writing a song or writing a play or ordering from McDonald’s.”
“I know that I need my coffee in the morning, and I don’t want to talk to anybody at the start of my day!”
“I know that I need a lot of sleep, and while I’m filming, I probably won’t get it.”
“The older I get, the easier it is to be all of me.”
“One thing I refuse to do is force it. So I’ve canceled many auditions because nothing has come up, and I don’t want to waste anybody’s time. God forbid they outright give it to me and I don’t connect with it.”
“I’m black. I’m gay. I’m culturally Christian. I am a walking target on so many levels, and it is horrifying and a cross that very, very many of us who look like me have to bear.”
“Titus belongs to ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,’ Titus Andromedon. Tituss Burgess couldn’t be more different. I get how people think I’m one and the same, but I just don’t live there. I’m nothing like that man, and whatever I would do wouldn’t be in stark contrast just because, but because I’m in stark contrast, it would be different.”
“I was on ‘Blue Bloods.’ Which I think got cut.”
“The issue with race particularly within this country is largely because of lack of dialogue.”
“Honestly, racism is something learned, not something that you just pick up one day and wish to dislike someone.”
“I’m writing a musical. I am. I was able to buy the rights to ‘The Preacher’s Wife,’ which starred Whitney Houston… I’m writing a whole new score and all the lyrics for it.”
“I fell asleep during ‘The Dark Knight Rises.’ I fell asleep during ‘The Hunger Games,’ all of them. I cannot stay awake. As soon as a movie starts, I’m asleep!”
“The first role that I got on Broadway was supposedly for a white man. But I had some producers who fought for me and allowed me to come in.”
“I never had trouble within the audition room. That is a room that I control. So while I certainly experienced versions of what Titus Andromedon was going through, I never experienced the self-doubt.”
“I had this one audition – I won’t say the casting director’s name, but she was on the phone the whole time I sang. I was literally doing my audition, and she was on the phone. So I guess whatever it is she was ordering for lunch was more important than the high C’s I was belting out.”
“I don’t go out much. I have people over, and I cook dinner, or we play the piano, or we watch TV.”
“I’m obsessed with the ‘Real Housewives ATL,’ sorry about it. It’s one of my favorite shows of all time.”
“I love ‘Bates Motel.’ I’m a huge Vera Farmiga fan, and I’m a huge Freddie Highmore fan. In fact, that entire principal casting.”
“’Penny Dreadful’ is so realistic. The tonality is so earthy and so real that I actually believe it is in the realm of possibility for all these extra species to exist among us.”
“Black people, if I may, we don’t get a lot of opportunities to do a lot of different things outside the norm, outside of what is expected of us. Black women on Broadway are expected to put themselves downstage center and tear the roof off.”
“I get to do some unbelievably layered things. The material that I’m given is so complex, and I’m so grateful for it, so I welcome any opportunities to push boundaries.”
“I do not like attention. Oddly enough, I do everything I can to avoid it.”
“The level of comfort that people feel with me has taken some getting used to.”
“I could not leave Georgia fast enough.”
“I’m comfortable airing my laundry. I don’t think one thing’s dirty or clean. It’s just what I wear.”
“I prayed fervently for a series regular job on a show that had the perceived caliber of talent that ’30 Rock’ had.”
“My mom is quite religious, and she got the name Tituss from the Bible. It’s one of the smallest books in the Bible. I don’t know why she added an ‘s,’ but she just did.”
“For me, having walked through Times Square so many times as a broke and starving artist, as a TV star, and now having other hopes and dreams, it just represents possibility and the moment of full circle.”
“Sondheim is New York.”
“So much of what I do is inspired by and for the LGBTQ community and for everyone but, just, being a theater kid and wanting to do stuff that represents us in a positive light.”
“Taking care of children was not something I was good at.”
“I am one of the lucky ones, to work with comic giants.”
“I get to play some zany, multilayered, very complex individuals.”
“Even on my worst days… the influx of joy that I get from interactions with fans… is a treat.”
“I will work for Tina Fey forever.”
“I’m not one of those people to outgrow my initial blessings.”
“I am well aware of my good fortune, and I only hope to diversify so I can do what I’m already doing for more people as opposed to being so large and so great that I no longer want to do the thing that got me here.”
“Miserable people tend to act out.”
“I enjoy my alone time, but I’m an open book.”
“The people I’ve met have been inherently delicious and warm and appreciative. It makes those 14-hour-days so worth it.”
“If I stayed in Florida, I would have a house and a dog and a partner. And, honestly, I was so bored.”
“Actors are a peculiar breed.”
“I came from the Sticks, literally. I grew up in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, just outside Athens, Georgia.”
“We were always in church, and always singing, so once I realized that music was something that I had a knack for, I sort of latched onto it, and it helped give me an identity and figure out who I was as a person. It informed my way into theater, which informed my way into television.”
“My microphone went out in the 2009 Tony Awards. It was my big moment, and I was so excited to perform and lead the cast; I sang ‘Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat.’ Every actor dreams of standing front and center on the Tony Awards, and I start to sing, and you hear this crackling. I had no idea what to do – were they going to stop a live telecast?”
“I’m very involved in church and social-justice issues, and my personality is far more introspective.”
“Outside stimulation makes me nervous!”
“I don’t want to sound pretentious or meta or anything, but I don’t write until it comes to me… People know when something is inspired and when something is not, and I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.”
“Why invite you to dinner if I can’t cook?”
“I have always thought to do my best work.”
“I’m a person who does not like to journal; I don’t like to sit down and write… I don’t even like sending emails.”
“You put it out there, you go film it, you go write it, you go record it… but the fans are the ones who decide it.”
“It’s important for me to talk about my life as a gay man, not gay themes per se, in my work.”
“Often times, if you’re a bit of a crossover artist, audiences see you as only one thing.”
“I’m a walking contradiction on so many levels. I’m gay, black, and a Christian.”
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