An icon painter starts not with Jesus Christ but by finding earth and rubbing. Now what is earth, what are you rubbing in directing?

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space, whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.

A stage space has two rules: (1) Anything can happen and (2) Something must happen.

Drama is exposure; it is confrontation; it is contradiction and it leads to analysis, construction, recognition and eventually to an awakening of understanding.

It takes a long while for a director to cease thinking in terms of the result he desires and instead concentrate on discovering the source of energy in the actor from which true impulses arise.

The work of rehearsal is looking for meaning and then making it meaningful.

The work of a director can be summed up in two very simple words. Why and How.

Nothing in theatre has any meaning before or after. Meaning is now.

A word does not start as a word – it is an end product which begins as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behaviour which dictates the need for expression.

The closeness of reality and the distance of myth, because if there is no distance you aren't amazed, and if there is no closeness you aren't moved.

In the theatre, every form once born is mortal; every form must be reconceived, and its new conception will bear the marks of all the influences that surround it.

... With a slight miscalculated leap cleared to the iron picket fence. Put the fear of God into me, picket fences and balls don't mix.

Obey the principles without being bound by them.

Anyone can be rich and not everyone can be successful.

[T]he only thing the United States government ever did about slavery was to abolish it. Perhaps that was a mistake, but I do not feel inclined to apologize for it.

There is no dogma, there isn't anything about how the universe works.

There will always be good and bad in every community.

You can put a dog in a scene and everyone's going to be better, I guarantee it. And if they're not better, just shoot the dog.

You get mixed messages because I have mixed feelings.

I started writing short fiction very briefly, as I imagine is the case for some novelists.