Quotes

I never really trained to be a musician, but I've been playing guitar since I was around, like, 13 years old. For me, the guitar has always been the instrument that I've played. I play a little piano. I taught myself everything by ear. I don't read music at all, which has not really been a hindrance.

I think we all have demons, but my demons aren't that bad. They're productive demons. They keep me focused on the man I want to be and the life I want to live.

When you start hiding things away, that's when the darkness creeps up. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Social media is its own sort of thing: Twitter and Facebook have changed the way everyone perceives everything.

No one ever tells you what the grieving process is going to be like. The process of losing a parent or ending a show or vocal injuries - they all bring on their own special breed of dismay... You just have to ride the wave. You don't have any other choice.

All I ever wanted to do was be on Broadway. I mean, remember, I grew up in a trailer.

For me, music is sort of my passion, more so than being an actor. I just never tried to make a career as a musician. It was just something that I did on my own time, just for me. I had written a lot of songs, but I don't really record a lot of music because, for me, it's the same way as a poet: I write to get things out. It's sort of cathartic.

I grew up in a very small, rural country town, and we didn't really have 'the arts.'

Three-quarters of my family is Irish. Of course, the 'Kazee' is not.

Drag shows are one of my favorite things in the world. As a straight man I love going to gay bars. People at gay bars just love to dance.

'Peter and the Starcatcher' is the most amazing piece of theater I think I've ever seen. It made we want to be a kid again and made me want to pretend, which I do on a nightly basis.

We go see theater, we take in art, because it makes us feel.

When you think about Broadway, you think broad and big, but the fact is there are so many plays that are very intimate, but fill a 1,500-seat house. Plays like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' have deep moments of silence and intimacy to them.

I would love to play Lee in 'True West' and Bobby in 'Company.'

The thing is that I'm an actor first, and in 'Once,' I was able to be a musician and a singer as well as an actor.

There's never been a question of not being a part of this business or not being a part of this industry - I love it - it's in my blood; it's always been in my blood. It's just a part of who I am.

I've got to say I'm a Jon Snow guy for sure.

I just always wanted to write my own album and play my own music.

I'm dying to do a Sam Shepard play. 'Curse of the Starving Class,' 'Buried Child,' 'True West,' 'Cowboy Mouth,' 'Fool for Love' - I'll do any of them.

I don't write happy songs.

I'm a performer. I'm pretending to be someone else. I'm not putting my own self into the show every night.

You have to have a life. And life has to go on when your voice shuts down on you and you have to take a break from what you're doing for a career.

I was a disruptive student. I hated my teachers, especially my Spanish teacher. When I went to see the musical 'Matilda,' the horrible Miss Trunchbull brought back all sorts of horrible memories. I'd go into Spanish class, put on headphones, and sing at the top of my lungs until they threw me out.

I will never not know where I came from. I can be in the biggest house, the best apartment, winning Tonys and Grammys and whatever, and I will always remember waiting in line for government cheese and bread and having food stamps. I had a tough life, and I will never not know the way I was raised and the place where I was raised.

For me, Facebook and Twitter was always just a way for me to reach out to the fans of the show, to communicate with my friends who where in the business, and I never felt like I wanted to use it to further my career in some way. I don't know that it has the power or the ability to do that. I just never thought about it in those terms.

My mother always told me before shows to stand up and show them whose little boy you are.

If you try to create someone else's performance, it becomes a facsimile of a facsimile.

There was always music in my house when I was a kid. On Saturday mornings, my mother would clean house to 45s blaring out the songs of Neil Diamond, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Cat Stevens, Harry Chapin.

What would George Clooney do? That's one of my favorites. He is one of my favorite actors and one of my favorite human beings. I don't know if I have a serious life philosophy.

For me, I was a musician long before I was an actor.

I'm a person who's very interested in science and the universe and quantum physics and astrophysics.

It's amazing how fast you learn something if they shove you out on the stage and say, 'Learn it.'

When my friends and I grew up, we had 'Full House,' 'Growing Pains' and 'Roseanne.' These sitcoms were about something, about real people in a sense. They sort of super-sized real life where things aren't necessarily exactly how you go through them in daily life, but you can relate to something, and you can pull something out of it.

Drag shows are one of my favorite things in the world.

As a straight man, I love going to gay bars. People at gay bars just love to dance.

It's intimidating any time to have a piece of art that someone else created, and that person says, 'Let's see what you created based on what I created.'

When you're on set with Ed Asner or Melissa Peterman, you start to sort of exist in a different realm sometimes. You try not to let that get in your head, and you try not to let that overtake you.

At my high school, it was the first time they had TV monitors up, and before class would start, they would have CMT and the music videos playing.

Nobody's ever really dead on 'Game of Thrones.'