It's great when people have the confidence to discuss their sexuality if it works for them. I can't fault someone for not coming out, because I don't know their journey, what scares them, what's at stake, or how it will affect their personal life or family.

Michael Feinstein

Believe in yourself, and find ways to express yourself, and find the discipline to keep growing.

Michael Feinstein

I've always found that the most powerful way to create change is to be myself and not be afraid to express who I am.

Michael Feinstein

I just didn't like the word 'gay.' I still don't like it. It's a dumb way of describing sexuality. I like 'queer' or other words, but 'gay' is a word that had a completely different-meaning word and has been reappropriated. I just don't like it.

Michael Feinstein

Activism is a very admirable way to create change, but it has to go hand in hand with personal contact with the people with whom we have opposing points of view; without that, there will never be any movement.

Michael Feinstein

As hackneyed and cliche as it sounds, follow your heart. We are all given intuition and instincts, and sometimes it is hard to follow those instincts with the fears and pressures that surround us - but you have to do it.

Michael Feinstein

For me, there is no point in doing a duet unless it is organic or there is an emotional thru line.

Michael Feinstein

I meditate a lot and pray for guidance. If, in a moment of self-contemplation or meditation, I were to feel very strongly that I shouldn't be an entertainer anymore, that I should be doing something else, I would stop immediately.

Michael Feinstein

When Sondheim was visiting the Library of Congress, where the manuscript of 'Porgy and Bess' is housed, he was so overcome with emotion while holding the score in his hands that he shed a tear. He shed several tears, but one of the tears actually fell onto the original manuscript. And he was horrified.

Michael Feinstein

I've had a couple of times where things were so extraordinary wonderful that it changed my world. One of them was when I met Ira Gershwin and started working with him. That was a game-changer for me. It changed the entire course and direction of my life.

Michael Feinstein

I'm very mindful of trying to do something good in the world. When I see injustice in the world, it's very hard for me.

Michael Feinstein

He's a world-famous name to people who care about his music, but there are many people who have never heard of George Gershwin and those numbers increase.

Michael Feinstein

Most of the musicals I go to I simply don't enjoy, so I don't go to them unless a number of people I trust say I have to.

Michael Feinstein

The Gershwin legacy is extraordinary because George Gershwin died in 1937, but his music is as fresh and vital today as when he originally created it.

Michael Feinstein

There's a truth that comes through when an author performs his own work that is unique and special.

Michael Feinstein

Sound preservation is not only the history of our culture and our country but also a document of life in the world. There is something with sound that is so extraordinary that it can be preserved, that we can listen to a recording made in 1925 and be transported back to that time.

Michael Feinstein

When people ask me where I live, I say I live mainly on the road.

Michael Feinstein

I started out as a pianist and singer in gay and piano bars - they were the only places I could get a job singing show tunes.

Michael Feinstein

My entire career proves to me that if you believe in what you're doing, you will reap the benefits.

Michael Feinstein

I think it should be illegal for people to throw away music.

Michael Feinstein

I will not programme generic orchestrations but try to find original ones - when I play Richard Rodgers songs, for example, I have Peggy Lee's original orchestrations that I got from her granddaughter for them.

Michael Feinstein