Mandy Patinkin quotes:

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

If you're sick, watch funny movies.

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

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 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.

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

I'm just an actor. I am nothing special.

The great love of my life is music.

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.

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

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.

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.

You rarely pay the rent by doing Shakespeare or Ibsen.

Sondheim is the Shakespeare of the musical theater world.

My life exists in an imagined reality.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.'

Comparison leads to violence.

Everyone's entitled to their own experience.

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

Everything I experience influences everything I do.

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

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

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.

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

I HAVE NO IDEA WHATS COMING NEXT OR WHERE IT WILL COME FROM; I ENJOY THE SURPRISE OF IT ALL.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I'm an obsessive person. I like intensity.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Now get in the cartoonishly evil vehicle and drive!

Our actions are the ground we walk on.

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

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

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.

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.

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

There's not a lot of money in revenge.

This is unbearable how I talk.

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.

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

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.