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" All the big successes of my career have been ideas that, on paper, you think, 'Well nobody's going to go for this because that genre is so dead.' "

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" I think when you take the big swings - and I've done plenty of big swings that I was told were never going to work - those are always the things that break through. "

" The Hollywood thing is - like, it feels like the biggest thing in the world, and yet it's the smallest town. "

" I love actors, but I really love actresses, and I really love actresses whose work touched and informed my coming-up years. "

" I had been accepted to film school, but my parents couldn't afford it, and yet they made too much money for me to get a scholarship. "

" In television and the movie business, the people who are promoted and the people who are mentored always look like the white guys. "

" I'm fascinated by the whole clown phobia thing because I personally don't have it. "

" The only way to get through the life I had was just to have a big head of steam and determination. "

" Originally, 'Popular' was going to be a movie. "

" I think I have a pattern of nice and lovely and then dark and twisted. "

" I believe most people don't go into show business unless they've been majorly unloved as a child. "

" Just because you have a baby on your hip - or one on the way or two at home - doesn't mean you can't go after your dreams. "

" I remember I always felt much more safe standing up on a chair and singing in front of my mother than I was in front of my father! "

" Here's the thing: When you tell somebody, 'I love you. I have always loved your work, and I want to show people a different side of you,' it's sort of an interesting thing that in my case, I've been very lucky, where they're like, 'OK.' "

" I came of age during AIDS and the terror of that and the sadness and the death and the overwhelming despair. "

" When I started, you couldn't do anything. A gay person trying to write a gay character in 1998 - it was so difficult. "

" Larry Kramer wisely realized so early on that to change the world, people have to know you. If they know you and see that we are all the same - that we all have normal hearts - that's the first step. I'm both amazed at the progress and amazed at how far we have to go. "

Change The World

" I'd never had a mentor in Hollywood. Men have always been in control of the business, and they usually mentor people who are like them - but two inches shorter. "

" I do work with a lot of women in my company, and I write a lot of roles for women over 40. I think, in 'Feud' alone, we have 15 roles for women over 40, which I'm very proud about. "

" I love Larry Kramer's advocacy, and I love him as a person, and I think young people need to see that story. "

" I think that the work that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford did was truly extraordinary, and that's their legacy. Not the other petty stuff. "

" I only wrote two fan letters in my life. One was to Bette Davis. And one was to Ron Palillo, who played Horshack on 'Welcome Back, Kotter.' And Ron did not write me back, but Bette Davis did. "

" I'll ask the writers' room who they voted for Emmy awards, but I'll never ask who they voted for president. "

" I don't think there's ever a winner in a feud. It's about emotional pain and an inability to conquer the pain. "

" People think I'm just sort of this P. T. Barnum, razzle-dazzle guy. They think I go out of my way to be outlandish and theatrical at the expense of having emotions. They don't get that there's another side to me, and I keep trying to show that other side. "

" I loved musicals, and I loved Barbra Streisand, and I loved Louis Malle. My tastes were very bizarre, but the thing they all had in common is that they took me out of my life and made me feel something. "

" One thing I always do is just tell actors that I'm as afraid as they are, because I can sense that, and I feel it, too. "

" Part of being an artist is being able to write about the world you live in and the times that you've been a part of. "

" I had a very rocky, difficult, emotional childhood with my parents. "

" I formed this thing called the Half Foundation, and what I tried to do is quantify hiring practices in Hollywood. Half the population is women, so half of the storytellers should be women. Fifty percent of all the directors in my company are women, and it will forever be that way. "

" Joan Crawford and Bette Davis are larger than life. They just are. They sucked all the oxygen out of a room: they're icons; they loom large in our imaginations. But the truth of the matter is both women were diminutive. "