Creativity is a form of knowledge.

I don't want to be in an art bubble.

There is a wealth of unexpressed love in the world.

As a director, I never feel that I have the answers.

I could never have been an accountant. I got a D in math.

It's freeing to not be caught up in your own personal baggage.

The hardest part about directing is getting everyone on the same page.

I kind of love working on film because television in live, that's tricky.

I've never looked at a tax return without immediately losing consciousness.

It's a great loss.[Carrie Fisher] was a comic genius, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not a writer, although, as a filmmaker, you are an author in a certain way.

I always feel on film you have to earn a ballad, because it's a different kind of pace.

I grew up with a beautiful gold harp sitting in our living room. My older sister played it.

When you're a freelance director, you are hired to create the art, and it kind of stops there.

The musical theater is a glorious and distinctly American innovation in the history of theater.

Politics, to a degree, is about legislation, administration. You can't be there in the trenches.

I'd much rather fail than do something like 'The Chorus Line' movie, sanitized and Hollywoodized.

Opera is the ultimate art form. It has singing and music and drama and dance and emotion and story.

My great joy in working on anything is stepping out in front of the camera and working with the actors.

I found that something exists between director and actor sometimes that surpasses or transcends language.

Film is a living, breathing thing. It's very delicate, and you have to listen and watch for what it tells you.

I have a very simple philosophy when it comes to casting, and it really is casting the best person for the role.

I had this epiphany that I like the interaction with people. I wanted to make things happen at a grassroots level.

Making work without memory is probably one of my biggest fears. It would be indistinguishable from work that is lazy.

Theatre and opera were always the twin kingdoms that I felt I had to conquer, because they were my parents' favorites.

My generation of director has no illusions that we are going to be fed and cared for by subsidized theater in America.

I kind of grew up on musicals, specifically, for whatever reason. They're something that really attracted me as a child.

The mission of the A.R.T. is to expand the boundaries of theater through works of the canon and the new works of tomorrow.

If I had my life to live over I would die fighting rather than be a slave again. I want no man's yoke on my shoulders no more.

As is well known, [Carrie Fisher] suffered - and was open about it. Her transparency was courageous, which is why people loved her.

I've gotten to the point that I don't even know what tomorrow brings. When I'm teaching, obviously I'm in town for the class every week.

I am always looking for what piece, what artists, what playwrights, what directors, what subject matter is going to catalyze an audience.

As a director, you should choose a project that will educate you and enrich your life, because you're going to be doing it for two years.

The thing about movie musicals is that there have been some brilliant ones, but when they're bad, they're really bad - big white elephants.

Music is rhythm, and all theater is rhythm. It's about tempo and change and pulse, whether you're doing a verse play by Shakespeare or a musical.

Im always interested in working with people who are good team players - that are selfless that way in their interests and dedication to the project.

I'm sorry, but to ask an audience these days to invest three hours in a show requires your heroine be an understandable and fully rounded character.

I'm always interested in working with people who are good team players - that are selfless that way in their interests and dedication to the project.

I think actually what keeps the intensity manageable - it's a little counterintuitive - is that it's changing all the time. Every week is different for me.

Im always interested in looking - historically - at how theater can animate history and how all of that can make us engage with our lives in an enriching way.

I'm always interested in looking - historically - at how theater can animate history and how all of that can make us engage with our lives in an enriching way.

Art cannot be looked at as an elite, sacred event anymore. It has to be embraced as an accessible, popular form, which is what I believe theater is at its roots.

We're a depraved civilization. All this technology, all the computer games and the iPhones... nobody will sit for art anymore. What a dismaying state of humanity.

I'm aware of being a stranger, an outsider, and that's always an advantage for an artist. It means I can see from the inside and the outside. I have that double vision.

When you're doing an action set piece, it's very similar to choreography in a way because it's shot that way. It's meticulous how it's rehearsed. I mean, you have no idea.

I listen to music, I read scripts, and I know pretty intuitively if I can unlock it in a way. It's actually very liberating when you understand that not everything is for you.

My last show that I did on Broadway was - I hate to say this, but - 'Cats.' There you go. So I was doing 'Cats' on Broadway, and I injured my back. It was a really tough show.

Maybe because I come from choreography, I've always felt that there's something about action films that made it very natural for me to go that way. It's story through movement.

What's perfect now, might not be so 10 years hence. Whatever we're basing our design ideas on is not what we remember in the past. It's something that kind of folds in on itself.

Creativity and the world of the imagination - the beauty of what we see as a child and the kind of play that we experience as a child - can be a way for us to survive tough times.

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