Robert Wilson

“The first thing you must know as an actor or director is the space you will inhabit. See the architecture; imagine where things can happen in space.”

“I usually stay in on Sunday nights. I'm not much of a party person.”

“When you're playing King Lear, you have to have a little humour, or you will have no tragedy when the king dies.”

“The first year I was in New York, I met Martha Graham. She said, 'Well, Mr. Wilson, what do you want to do in life?' I was 21 years old, and I said, 'I have no idea.' And she said, 'If you work long enough and hard enough, you'll find something.'”

“Everything in Wagner's work - the music, the acting, the staging - stemmed from the text. Everything served to interpret the text.”

“At the end of the 1960s, I was part of the downtown theatrical movement in New York that was making work in alleyways, garages, gyms, churches, non-traditional spaces. The idea was to get away from the illusion of the conventional theatre. But then I thought, what's wrong with illusion?”

“I think people are looking for an alternative to the fast pace of everyday life and entertainment.”

“Some years ago, I was invited to speak in Houston, Texas. They said I was a founder of 'postmodern theatre'. So I said to my office, 'This is ridiculous for me to go and speak about postmodern theatre when I don't know what it means, but... they're paying me a lot of money, so I'll go.'”

“I had no idea I was going to have a career in the theater. I did not plan it.”

“I never studied theatre; I learned it by doing it. If I had studied theatre, I would not be making the kind of theatre I am making.”

“If you see the sunset, does it have to mean something? If you hear the birds singing does it have to have a message?”

“By giving the leadership to the private sector in a capitalistic society, we're going to measure the value of art by how many products we can sell.”

“One of the few things that will remain of this time is what artists are doing. They are the journal and the diary of our time.”

“I collect rocks from all over the world. I have a ring of stones that date to 3500 B.C. It's like a little Stonehenge.”

“My work has always dealt with a kind of space that allows one to daydream.”

“I don't see much difference between living and working. I think living is a part of my work. People often say, 'How can you work so much?' I don't think about it as work. I think of it as a way to live.”

“I think by drawing, so I'll draw or diagram everything from a piece of furniture to a stage gesture. I understand things best when they're in graphics, not words.”

“I never thought about the relationship of my mother, my family, to the content of my work.”