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Big Bird is based on what I learned as a child.

Big Bird went through his very human kind of struggles as a child. No other children's character has been that complete and detailed.

I always wanted to be a big star.

When he first started - Jim Henson, who created Bid Bird and Oscar - he said Big Bird was just a big, goofy guy. And it was - a script came along and I said, 'I think Big Bird would be much more useful to the show if he were a child learning all the things we were teaching in the show.' And so he didn't know the alphabet, even, for instance.

The way 'star' used to be reserved for a small number of people, and when the star category became so vast, they came up with 'superstar,' and then they came up with 'megastar.'

Shirley Maclaine once said that she didn't want to be a big star, just a long star. That's what I want too.

I'd thought of myself as a great big motion picture star from the time I was 6.

I don't think the goal is, 'How big a star did you ever become?' I think the goal is, 'Were you able to express yourself?'

The idea of being a 'child star' always sounded awful to people my age, and so I was just very aware that these things are kind of fleeting and that a lot of it didn't have to do with me: it had to do with my age; it had to do with whatever came to mind when people thought of a young internet sensation.