Mike Nichols

“You want to make money, remake 'Cinderella.' You want to move people, remake the Hippolytus and Phaedra myth.”

“I believed early and still believe that everybody who can act can do it already, just they don't know how and don't want to talk about it.”

“I think that to make something alive, instead of on a page, is an honorable task. And it turns me on.”

“Chicago is not a very fashion-driven place. Nobody says, 'Oh, you've got to come see these fabulous people!' Nobody cares.”

“You can always tell gifted and highly intelligent people as they always turn to the past. Any young person who knows anything that happened before 1980, or 1990, or 2000 for that matter, is immediately someone who is intelligent, probably creative, maybe a writer. Nobody who is drawn to the past and learning about the past is not gifted.”

“Oh my God, if I know anything, I know I'm gonna die! I never forget that. I know I'll be forgotten in a minute, and that's just fine with me.”

“There's nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you're meant to do. It's like falling in love.”

“American society to me and my brother was thrilling because, first of all, the food made noise. We were so excited about Rice Krispies and Coca-Cola. We had only silent food in our country, and we loved listening to our lunch and breakfast.”

“We are being entertained all the time - in the bathroom, on the train, in our beds. Sure, there is a smaller audience for theater. But we know from radio that entertainment never goes away, it just changes. And more power to it.”

“I think a director can make a play happen before your eyes so that you are part of it and it is part of you. If you can get it right, there's no mystery. It's not about mystery. It's not even mysterious. It's about our lives.”

“Very often when a story really holds us, it gets pushed away because it's too close for comfort.”

“I keep coming back to it, over and over - adultery and cheating. It's the most interesting problem in the theater. How else do you get Oedipus? That's the first cheating in the theater.”

“A play, after all, is a mystery. There's no narration. And as soon as there's no narration, it's open to interpretation. It must be interpreted. You don't have a choice... Each play can become many things.”

“Technically, maybe I learned most of all from George Stevens, and among his movies I learned the most from 'A Place in the Sun.' It's a lesson in moviemaking.”

“My first memory in the world is my gym teacher ripping my mother's necklace off her neck and throwing it out the window and her running downstairs to go after it. I have no memory before that. I was 4. My father had a lot of girlfriends and my mother had a lot of boyfriends.”

“Nerves provide me with energy... It's when I don't have them, when I feel at ease, that's when I get worried.”

“I had a high school girlfriend whose mother gave us theater tickets, so I saw the second night performance of 'A Streetcar Named Desire.' My girl and I could not get up during intermission, we were so stunned. To this day it's the only thing I've seen on stage that's 100 percent real and 100 percent poetic simultaneously.”

“It took me forever, learning improvisation, because I had studied with Lee Strasberg - I dropped out of Chicago and went to his classes in New York for a couple of years, once or twice a week. What I didn't realize was I was learning directing because he wasn't all that good about acting, not for me.”

“I was standing right behind Marilyn, completely invisible, when she sang 'Happy birthday, Mr. President.' And indeed, the corny thing happened: Her dress split for my benefit, and there was Marilyn, and yes, indeed, she didn't wear any underwear.”

“I spend my money...I don't know on what.”