Haris Pasovic

“My company is called East-West Theatre precisely because Sarajevo is this city on the border between East and West, the place where the Great Mosque and the Catholic Cathedral and the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral stand almost within touching distance of each other.”

“My theatre is not a conventional one. It is bold, serious, funny, confronting. It is anything but boring.”

“Every time has its own 'Hamlet.'”

“I grew up in adoration of writers like Hemingway, George Orwell, Anna Akhmatova, and that has always been my idea about the artist - that you have to be a brave and freedom-loving person.”

“Individual acts have made Europe a civilized place and are key to its development. We must not forget it.”

“Art is freedom. If we don't have that element, we don't feel human anymore. Art is not decoration or a function. Before all that, art is art. This connection to meaning - our inner, intuitive knowledge - is something.”

“We need the daring visions. To go to theatre must be different than to go to shopping. We adventure together, we journey through the mindful and emotional landscapes, we create together an event, unique and unrepeatable.”

“Europe is a much more complex historical, cultural, and geographical concept than is envisaged in the reduced approach by the European Union.”

“We realised that art, theatre, and music in Sarajevo were resistance at the deepest level.”

“'Hamlet' is a universal story that concerns us all. These issues do not concern only Muslims, but all people equally, showing that we all share the same problems regardless of religion, nation and culture.”

“Culture is a part of basic human nature, of deep humanity.”

“The meaning of art in a time of suffering, a time of war, is much more intense. People are more focused.”

“The U.S. Declaration of Independence enshrines the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Alas, that is not the case everywhere in the world.”

“Many have asked me, 'Why have a film festival in the middle of a war?' But they have it backwards. The question is, 'Why have a war in the middle of a film festival?'”

“There's no real theatre without taking risks.”

“In war, everything changes. You are very selective of what you do because everything you do can be the last thing you do in your life.”

“Art has to be able to match life, to respond to the ever-changing forms of the world, to electrify the audience.”

“The 21st century is significantly different from the 20th century. The old models will not hold anymore. More and more, we are one people on Earth. We need to share our problems.”

“Life is not just food, it's something spiritual.”

“Art can articulate new ideas.”