MANDY PATINKIN

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

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.

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

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

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.'

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

I'm not frightened about terrorism. I'm frightened about the roots of what we call terrorism.

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.