The film director, in many instances, has to swallow somebody else's decision about the final form of something. It's so hard as to be intolerable.

In the commercial theater, I've been pretty fortunate. The producers that I've worked with have allowed me to define the artistic integrity, the artistic limits of the work.

If you're a director, your entire livelihood and your entire creativity is based on your self-confidence. Sometimes that's dangerously close to arrogance.

I always believe it's better to have 30 imaginations working on a project, rather than one imagination telling the other 29 what to do.

I've never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera.

In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar.

I would be terribly disappointed if anything would get in the way of my being cast in something, or if performances were canceled. It was a fix that I obviously needed.

One fine day I discovered that more complex plays really have to be directed.

I've experienced a private doubt, something that I've kept deeply inside, and then eventually delivered a piece of work that people responded to with huge enthusiasm.

Soundbite and slogan, strapline and headline, at every turn we meet hyperbole. The soaring inflation of the English language is more urgently in need of control than the economic variety.

Mem'ry All alone in the moonlight I can smile at the old days Life was beautiful then.

if i had to choose between breathing or loving you, i would say 'i love you' with my last breath

I see a lot of marriages crash and burn around me and my wife. I've always been curious about how hard it is to love well and be loved.

And if I want to get involved in choosing sides, I usually pick hockey or football.

Teachers are unparalleled in the role they play in children's lives.

Usually when people say they have mixed feelings about something, it's a sort of euphemistic way of saying they hate it.

No amount of prayer or meditation can do what helping others can do.

I just finished a novel, and I'm back kind of noodling on the screenplays. Screenplays are tough. I am making music, I'm just not sure what kind of music it is or where it's going.

The teacher doesn't teach, not really. The teacher offers stimulation and ways in which the person can educate himself or herself. At best the teacher wakes up that person and makes a person hungry.

Will you stand up an fight? he wondered bitterly. Or do you intend to remain on your knees for ever?

the 'natural' is not necessarily a 'human' value.