Top 13 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Stage Directors

We have seen too much defeatism, too much pessimism, too much of a negative approach. The answer is simple: if you want something very badly, you can achieve it. It may take patience, very hard work, a real struggle, and a long time; but it can be done. That much faith is a prerequisite of any undertaking.

There is a hunger to see the human presence acted out. As long as that need remains, people will find a way to do theater.

I hate the word 'production'...it's a ceremony, it's a ritual...you should go out of the theatre stronger and more human than when you went in.

There is provided an escape from the narrowness and poverty of the individual life, and the possibility of a life which is other and larger than our own, yet which is most truly our own. For, to be ourselves, we must be more than ourselves. What we call love is, in truth . . . the losing of our individual selves to gain a larger self.

How to you teach someone that a theatre comes about first as an idea, from an individual who has a philosophy and a passion? That a theatre's idea is its heart and individual soul? That the person who creates it must have the desire not only to create work, but also to create the conditions in which that work can live-and in which others can do it as well? How do you teach someone to want to be a midwife as well as a mother.

The building is absolutely stunning. It is a magnificent and important piece of architecture that contributes greatly to the cultural landscape of Washington. It is one the best designed buildings in D.C. in the last decade.

Everything in life is theater.

Art is personal, originating from dreams, ideas, neuroses; art is shared, harkening back to the humans around the fire; art imbues pleasure and power by enabling people to know reality...Art is a necessity because it is a way of knowing...Is the need for truth physiological? Art exists out of time...images may be different bu there is always a repetition- a thread.

It is not the fact that a man has riches which keeps him from the kingdom of heaven, but the fact that riches have him.

The answer is simple; if you want something very badly, you can achieve it.

There are two kinds of theatre, good and bad. Much as I should like to see theatre in America, I would rather have no theatre than bad theatre. What we must strive for is perfection and come as close to it as is humanly possible.

Theatre is not supposed to represent psychology but passions, which is totally different. Its role is to represent the soul's different emotional states, and those of the mind, the world history.

I am in the present and only the present matters to me