Top 77 Mandy Patinkin Quotes

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

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

We must build relationships, get to know one another’s children, open our arms rather than close our hearts.

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.

Violence only perpetrates more violence, and it becomes a vicious cycle. There are political situations all over the world where there are untold acts of revenge for incidences, and thousands and thousands of lives are lost because of them.

I didn’t live far from where Leopold and Loeb lived on Chicago’s South Side, so I had heard about them as a kid.

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.’

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.

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

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

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 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 encourage all men – and all women who love their men – to make sure to get out every year, from the age of 50 on, and have PSA and DRE tests. With early detection, you can have an early cure.

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

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.

Bob Hurwitz, the president of Nonesuch, the company that releases my records, is a mentor. He taught me how to assemble a script to record an album.

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.

Too often, we think that, when we have a problem with our lives or our country, that the way to fix it is to take an eye for an eye. That doesn’t help anything or anyone.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 saw an interview that I did with someone, and I was horrified by it. And I said to my wife, ‘This is unbearable how I talk.’

It’s very frightening when you’re told you have any form of the c-word, but because of early detection, they caught it before it had hardly begun. I’m completely cured and will go on to have a wonderful, fruitful life. I’ll never die of prostate cancer.

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.

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

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.

The real world is far more hellish for all us than any fictional representation of it.

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

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

I still have the sword of Inigo Montoya – it’s mine!

We need to learn to accept and certainly mourn any harm that comes to any human being on this earth. But we also need to not be vengeful.

I think Bill Finn’s one of the geniuses of theatre, and James Lapine’s one of the diamonds of my generation. The two together are a joy!

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

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

He was a great man. He taught himself how to walk again, to write with his left hand. My father was a hero.

I feel like I know so little, and I just hope I get to live so long. I came to puberty late; it’s all been late.

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

I’m in a constant state of gratitude.

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.

We must not allow the horrific actions of madmen to cut us off from our humanity.

As a young man, I think I was in a bit of the revenge business for too many years of my life.

The gift I have to give to my fellow countrymen and people around the world, the facts are the Muslim community are our gift. They are the fabric of what makes America great.

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

I’m an obsessive person. I like intensity.

You rarely pay the rent by doing Shakespeare or Ibsen.

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

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.

Sometimes, trying to make a work of art can be very difficult and very painful.

Even if it’s a wonderful life, you wanna go somewhere and see the way other people reflect on the world and the lives that we’re all living… I think regional theater is the life blood of our cultural lives.

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.

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

If I have a tombstone when it’s all over, it will say, ‘He tried to connect.’

When I was a kid, they used to say, ‘Oh man, you don’t ever wanna leave New York.’ I don’t ever want to stay in New York!

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 just love, love going around and traveling and bringing the music to people. They just make you feel so happy that you came.

I was forced to lie to my father by doctors and relatives. I made that choice and agreed with them, and I will never, ever get over it. 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.

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

On occasion, a well-constructed drama can do what no reality or news program can do, what Shakespeare does brilliantly, is it can show both sides’ opinions.

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

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.

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.

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.