Top 78 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Wilson - Page 2

I collect rocks from all over the world. I have a ring of stones that date to 3500 B.C. It's like a little Stonehenge.

I never studied theatre; I learned it by doing it. If I had studied theatre, I would not be making the kind of theatre I am making.

The first year I was in New York, I met Martha Graham. She said, 'Well, Mr. Wilson, what do you want to do in life?' I was 21 years old, and I said, 'I have no idea.' And she said, 'If you work long enough and hard enough, you'll find something.'

At the end of the 1960s, I was part of the downtown theatrical movement in New York that was making work in alleyways, garages, gyms, churches, non-traditional spaces. The idea was to get away from the illusion of the conventional theatre. But then I thought, what's wrong with illusion?

I do still collect chairs.

When I was 12 years old, I went to Natchitoches, La.; it was summer vacation with my family. We visited a plantation, Melrose. And I met an Afro-American woman who was a painter. I already had some idea of what I wanted to do in life, and one of the things that interested me was painting.

I learned loudness from working with Lou Reed.

I think that in my plays you can come in for 20 minutes and get something out of it. I'd like to do a play that would run for days. I don't think time is that important. Nature doesn't hurry the sky, the changing clouds and sunsets.

As a very young man growing up in Texas, usually I got a shotgun or cowboy boots for Christmas.

In my theater, I'm not trying to change the world.

When works get too intellectual, they lose their intensity.

I usually stay in on Sunday nights. I'm not much of a party person.

I don't see anyone for the first hour and a half that I'm awake. I don't like to talk, and I don't like to hear any sounds. People know not to bother me! I use that time to read, and make lists and notes of things I have to do later in the day.

I've always been attracted to classic patterns in architecture, music and drama.

I think by drawing, so I'll draw or diagram everything from a piece of furniture to a stage gesture. I understand things best when they're in graphics, not words.

It's important that we have the traditional operas and the repertory, but we should also have something new.

Chairs are like sculpture.

I think it's just my nature. I can't work on one thing. I have to work on many things.