I have a wonderful make-up crew. They're the same people restoring the Statue of Liberty.

I'm not going to waste my time worrying about these Confederate statues. That's wasted energy.

Activating is about changing people's perceptions of overlooked or invisible spaces. A building can become an archetype, invisible, like for a New Yorker, for example, the Statue of Liberty. You look at it, and it disappears into the thousands of times you've already seen it.

A lot of women don't like when they're sort of fat, but a fat foot is as beautiful as a skinny foot. Think of Greek statues. Look how many people love the foot of the baby! There is something super-charming about the baby foot.

I sang and played keyboard, so I was virtually a statue at the back of the stage. I'm not complaining about that; I enjoyed that role.

I took a trip to D.C. before the Off Broadway production started, and one of the things that was really telling is that Hamilton has probably the smallest statue in all of the Mall area, and yet he's got the greatest monument of any of them because we're all walking around with him in our pockets.

If you want to initiate a broader debate about racism, is it really healthy to create an atmosphere in which it is not only statues that are being toppled but a range of cultural artefacts, TV series, celebrities, columnists and controversial broadcasters?

You have to accept the fact that sometimes you are the pigeon, and sometimes you are the statue.

When I was younger it was - you know, my dad dressed up in drag on 'Bosom Buddies.' And that was what I was having to deal with at the time. And then around the time that I was into college was when he became statue-worthy I guess you could say.

Over my dead body when I'm governor of Virginia are we ever going to take down the statue of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson or any hero of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Did you see the statue topple? Bill Clinton got nostalgic seeing something that big in a beret go down.

When you look at what's written under the Statue of Liberty, it's the immigrant story. It's about 'bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.' It's not about 'only bring me only your rich, your wealthy, your smart.'

And you have to remember that I came to America as an immigrant. You know, on a ship, through the Statue of Liberty. And I saw that skyline, not just as a representation of steel and concrete and glass, but as really the substance of the American Dream.

Fonteyn was our first proper British ballerina, and from the moment I started dancing, her image engulfed me. In my first year at the Royal Ballet School, Margot's statue was outside my dormitory. Like generations of budding ballet dancers before me, I used to touch her middle finger for luck.

When I first came to New York City, what I was thrilled about was not the Empire State Building, or the Statue of Liberty; it was the fireplugs in the street. These things that Jack Kirby had drawn. Or these cylindrical water towers on top of buildings that Steve Ditko's 'Spider-Man' fights used to happen in and around.

I've always had a strong feeling for the Statue of Liberty, because it became the statue of my personal liberty.

It's not about composition. It's the way you feel about how your objects should relate to each other. I've got lots of African statues and things, and the cleaner arranges them like soldiers, which drives me mad. So I have to rearrange them, and I must drive her mad, because I'm doing anarchy and she's doing military manoeuvres.

Donald Trump was in a tuxedo, standing next to his award: a statue of a palm tree, as tall as a toddler. It was 2010, and Trump was being honored by a charity - the Palm Beach Police Foundation - for his 'selfless support' of its cause. His support did not include any of his own money.

If you walk into the front hallway of the CIA, you will see, on your left, a statue of William 'Wild Bill' Donovan. Bill Donovan was the person who created the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, which was America's spy agency during World War II and then kind of morphed into what's now the CIA.

I've asked every grammar schoolteacher in the nation to have their students write on the meaning of the Statue of Liberty. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the winning kid got up to the microphone and, in front of the world, had to dig into a pocket to pull out a crumpled sheet of paper containing the words that would move us all?

History, after all, is a process, not a position, and it is not best written in bronze and marble. It is complex, plastic and ever-changing; all things that heroic statues are not.

The great untruth around which everything pivots is the idea that the defenders of these statues are the defenders of history and truth; while those who want to see them toppled or contextualised are the Huns at the gate, who would destroy national histories and bring down great men.

Historians spend their days engaged in the literally endless task of reshaping and expanding our view of the past, while statues are fixed and inflexible.

There's a statue of Jimmy Stewart in the Hollywood Wax Museum, and the statue talks better than he does.

The word 'iconic' is used too frequently - an icon is a statue carved in wood. It was shocking at first, when I got that reference. It was a responsibility, and it's impossible to live up to - you're supposed to be dead, for one thing.

What was moving, I think, was the fact that the statue is a woman and not a heroic, manly figure. So for all her scale and immensity, there's something soft about the Statue of Liberty, something tender about her.

I had never imagined that one day, my statue would be installed at Madame Tussauds.

Before me, Milkha Singhji was honored at Tussauds. But his statue did not have him in a turban, so I think I am the first turbaned Sardar to be featured at Tussauds.

I don't see any justification for the federal government owning land, other than the Statue of Liberty and maybe a few parks, maybe a few refuges. But to just own land to do nothing with it I think is a disservice to the Constitution.

Now there was no wonder in the Statue of Liberty illusion because he, Copperfield, attempted to do something so large that it stretched the credibility of the audience to the point where most people didn't believe any of it anymore.

In 2012, the city of Austin erected an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Willie Nelson in the heart of the business district. Schoolchildren, churchgoers, tourists, slackers, conventioneers, tech geeks - everybody, it seems - now congregate around this ponytailed shrine to outlaw country.