George C. Wolfe

“Growing up in the South, I was raised to be a Negro boy. I was acutely aware how other people perceived me, and that informed my behavior. That worked for a period of time, but it could also be suffocating.”

“When 'The Normal Heart' first appeared, the sense of urgency was so important.”

“I'm interested in exploring how an individual maintains a sense of power in a world that tends to make individuals feel powerless.”

“Theater, at the end of the day, is about ideas. It's about very large ideas. And if the play is beautifully written or smartly written and has incredible characters you follow on the journey, you take home these larger ideas. Whether it's 'Angels in America' or 'Lucky Guy' or 'Normal Heart,' you follow this moment-to-moment journey as an audience.”

“When you're writing, in theory, everybody is serving you. When you're directing, you're serving everybody - in the guise of acting like everybody's serving you. But you're really serving the materials. You're serving the actors. You're in charge, but it's not free.”

“A musical is what happens when text collides with motion collides with song collides with spectacle. And spectacle can be the human heart; it doesn't necessarily have to be a helicopter crashing.”

“I'm more attracted to art that smashes than I am attracted to art that sits on a shelf and is beautiful.”

“I love Kabuki, Noh theater and bunraku.”

“You can go see ballet in its purity; you can go to a recital to hear music by itself. But what the American musical does so thrillingly is bastardize these forms into something that is exhilarating and compelling and deeply moving.”

“I love and I'm intrigued by what history does to people and to subjects that matter.”

“I'm perpetually interested by living in places as an artist confronting challenges I've never confronted before and approaching them with as much craft and humanity as I can.”

“The worst thing when you're working is to say, 'I have a question,' and the other person goes, 'No! This is what it is.' That kind of rigidity is very challenging because musicals are constantly mutating.”

“The best of any artist is in their art.”

“Surviving failure is one thing. Surviving success is... is challenging, with the consequences and what you lose along the way.”

“I don't go, like, 'Hmm, I'm now going to create something for the black community.' I just feel this compelling urge. I just feel myself drawn to stories that I feel have a potency and immediacy.”

“My absolutely favorite time of working on a project is the time I spend not knowing what it is. Because the longer you live inside that period, the likelier you are to discover something new.”

“The Public Theater requires one to be very public, and writing requires one to be very private.”

“Every single wave, when I was overwhelmed and poor and struggling in New York, there were these extraordinary people in New York who said, 'Come this way.'”

“It's easier to be cynical and edgy and tough rather than overly emotional.”

“Anytime you create art, you create a mess. I mean, 'Hamlet' is a mess!”