Harvey Fierstein

When a politician like Marco Rubio is willing to sacrifice his career defining immigration reform legislation solely to insure that gays and lesbians are denied equal protection under the law, we have to admit that we're under attack. This is not pragmatic politics at work. These are the policies of bias, exclusion and unfairness.

I've read and traveled a lot in the Middle East, and I built on eyewitness accounts of horrific executions that would shape a boy's character and beliefs if he watched his father die that way. These are the stuff of which nightmares are made.

Short stories are my favorite art form. A good one is compact and complete, a telling little slice of life, capturing a moment in time that - for the character - defines her, changes her, is the tipping point for all that will follow.

A friend of mine - a cameraman at MTV - lost a lot of weight from cycling, and I thought I'd try it, too, thinking whenever you look at a cyclist they all look super-skinny, so hey, why not? But then it turned into such a psychologically satisfying thing.