Top 90 Quotes & Sayings by Joel Grey

'Cabaret' was the most commercial success that I've been involved in.

Satisfying as that 'Cabaret' role was, it is not the only thing I do. But Hollywood is somewhat limited in its perspective about what it is you do or don't do.

I wasn't sure what it would take to make it in the theater, but despite the struggle, that was all I ever really wanted.

I really did start a whole way of thinking about musical theater.

Theater is the most important thing in life for me.

The theater is the place where people create ideas and send messages out, and you learn, and I think it's a fair venue for disagreement and enlightenment.

My grandparents from the old country, Latvia, were all musical on my father's side.

When I met Jo Wilder, I fell crazy in love and never thought about homosexuality. And I thought, 'Well, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. This is life.'

I never learned to speak Yiddish, ever.

Eight times a week, I got to be a gay man, a remarkable gay man, and every night, that felt as full, as true, as passionate, and as authentic as I ever felt in my life.

I've always wanted to do, oddly enough, a live variety show, but only with a live audience.

If you don't tell the whole truth about yourself, life is a ridiculous exercise.

I came to realize, along with being attracted to girls, I had similar feelings for boys.

When you cast cross-racially, another dimension is added.

I never think about my age very much. I've always lived my life the same way, full of excitement and anticipation of wonderful things and the knowledge that some not-so-wonderful things come with it.

You can be taking two steps forward as an actor, but if a movie doesn't make money, you might as well be taking two steps backwards. It's all about economics.

I always wanted children, to be a dad. That was as important to me as being an actor.

For me to take a role, I read a script, and I think, 'Wow, I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I want to try.'

There is nothing I enjoy more than doing my show.

My father was Mickey Katz, who worked with Spike Jones and then went on to improvise some successful Yiddish parodies, some of which I perform. My favorite was 'Geshray of the Vilde Kotchke,' his version of 'Cry of the Wild Goose.'

All the things you do, even the shows that don't work, are as much work, but you learn more from the things that are difficult.

I don't want to do material that I don't like. I've always stuck to that policy. If that means being out of work for awhile, that's fine with me.

I had begun my professional career when I was 9 years old at the Cleveland Play House, and it was a very specific, real theater sort of like, you know, in England and the Berliner Ensemble - very devoted people. And I thought the theater was the greatest place I had ever been, and that's what I wanted to do.

My father was the one who used to stand up in the middle of a number to flutter his lips and make sputtering sounds into lyrics.

I used to eat Danny Kaye's food. I had his Chinese and Italian meals, and that was as good as it gets.

I'm always interested in the challenge of doing something new.

My dad would take me downtown, and I'd stand backstage and watch him in the vaudeville pit band. I was 6 or 7. He was a musician, a band leader, a wonderful clarinetist and saxophone player.

I don't like to bad-mouth other shows, but I was very disturbed after seeing 'Starlight Express.' It had very little to do with musical comedy as I know it. It had to do with sound and spectacle and records and technology and amplification.

I am concerned about the musical theater, selfishly, because I love it.

I love 'Cabaret' and 'George M!' They're both incredible as far as I'm concerned.

I was totally delighted, interested in, and amused by my stint on 'Voyager.'

After my bar mitzvah, I started to assimilate, to really not pay attention to my roots. The anti-Semitic experiences of my youth had been very painful. You try to put all that in the past and become a person of the world. I think that's the right thing to do. But it's not right to leave out who you really are. That's a tragedy.

I was traumatized by a lot of childhood stuff. I felt that I was bad somewhere, starting with my birth.

When I was eight, I went to the theatre, and I remember looking at the stage afterward and pointing and saying, 'I want to do that.' I don't think that's ever changed.

I love that moment just before the curtain goes up, whether I'm sitting in the audience or standing backstage. It's full of expectation. It's a thrill that's unequaled anywhere.

The Yiddish language is so rich and unusual that I've always been hooked on its sounds, although I don't speak it.

There are problems in doing television that have been plaguing me for years. I really like to have a lot of time, to rehearse and make things as good as they can be, but television often doesn't allow for that.

When my father came out on stage wearing a big cowboy hat and a shirt lettered 'Bar Mitzvah Ranch' to sing 'Home on the Range' in Yiddish, it was his way of saying, 'I want to be an American.'

There's a civility that has always been a part of me.

My daughter, Jennifer Grey, was in 'Dirty Dancing,' which was shot in the Catskill Mountains, where the great old Jewish entertainers used to appear. It was the first time she'd been to the Borscht Belt, and I don't think she's been back since.

I'm enormously sympathetic to talented people who have few roles to choose from.

I really do enjoy everything I do. I just do so much.

I'd like to direct something at the Public.

I was small growing up, and to make matters worse, I wore glasses, and my mother dressed me in attention-getting outfits. I was a target of bullies.

Larry Hagman and I are very old friends.

Being at the Play House, the only way I could see my life was that I would be an actor in a company, doing a lead role one week, a small part the next. That's what I thought I was going to be.

There's a lot going on in the world that's very disturbing: rewriting the Holocaust; pseudo-historians rewriting history itself. And we're dealing with a terrorist mentality that involves whole nations.

I think everything that happens to you becomes a part of what you end up doing and being and standing for.

The subject matter of the show, 'Cabaret,' was more than risky. And the emcee I would be playing didn't have a single line of dialogue. Still, it was full of possibilities, and it was mine.

It can take me forever to choose the right coffee cup in the morning. And it does make a difference!

I was so successful in Cleveland, and we moved to Los Angeles, and there was nothing for me to do. All of a sudden, from being a success, I was a has-been at 13.

I don't like labels, but if you have to put a label on it, I'm a gay man.

I always sort of saw myself as different from a musician.

My father was a musician and wanted me to study piano. I had no interest.

I never thought I would sing or dance - ever, ever, ever. My idea was to be Laurence Olivier or Peter Lorre or some great classical actor. I thought I'd be a character actor.

I was already in my early twenties, but I looked much younger because I was fresh-faced and, well, short. So I did songs such as 'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah' and jokes such as describing current events as 'ancient history.' Boy, did the audience roar at that one.

Whenever I get to work with great actors, I'm happy.

Often, entertainment goes deeper, in terms of ideas, than the newspapers.

I really didn't feel that my motion picture career was going the way I wanted it to go.

The fundamental job of the actor is to tell about the human condition, to be a voice for the truest ideas and deepest emotions.