As Shakespeare himself knew, the peace, the reconciliation that he created on the stage would not last an hour on the street.

I'm not interested in an imaginary world

I think there is no world without theatre.

We are still living in the aftershock of Hiroshima, people are still the scars of history.

If you engage people on a vital, important level, they will respond.

I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent we have no future.

In the end I think theatre has only one subject: justice

Violence is hidden within democratic structures because they are not radically democratic - Western democracy is merely a domestic convenience of consumerism.

Auschwitz is a place in which tragedy cannot occur.

The Greeks said very, very extreme things in their tragedies.

We may seem competent, but by the end of next century there will be new deserts, new ruins.

I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently.

If you didn't like your own life, you changed it. You ran away. You did something spectacular. you didn't steal someone else's story and pretend it was yours.

It's not that Good doesn't triumph over Evil, it's that the point spread is too small.

I live by myself, which I love. In this industry, you're so often surrounded by people and busy and talking to people. It's kind of lovely when you get home to just chill out.

There would be nothing to get me to run for president. I don't even understand how anyone would want that job at all. Although I would be able to play golf which I don't seem to have time now.

Every post is honourable in which a man can serve his country.

Close scrutiny of an object in nature will nearly always yield some significant fact.

I'd like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I've heard.

I think political people are afraid of me.

There is no Apocalypse.