My dad was a very conservative Republican businessman, so obviously I considered it a problem when I realized I was a lesbian.

One of the greatest things about being an artist is, as you get older, if you keep working hard in relationship to what you want the world to be and how you want it to become, there is a history of interesting growth that resonates with different moments in your life.

I'm very interested in the language of photography in relationship to painting.

I really love to drive. It's really hard for me to be a passenger, even though I get to look around a little bit more, but I've gotten really good at driving and looking.

It's a spirit that was given me and the relationships and meeting all these great people, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong; through Max I met a lot of people too. My first album was with Benny Carter.

I'm such a theater geek. Most of my friends are in this community, and it's really important for me to keep doing it. It takes the ego out of acting, whereas movies tend to involve it.

It's kind of a weird thing when you've been at the top of a division you've been in your entire career to kind of take a backseat because of friendship.

I know a little bit about deaf culture because a friend of mine has been in the deaf culture for awhile. Over the course of 25 years, she and I have talked about many of the issues and concerns for deaf people and deaf culture.