A biography for Simon McBurneyhasn’t been written yet.
“In 1600, Shakespeare's London was a city of 200,000 people. At the same time, there were already over a million in Tokyo.”
“When I met Miller, for me it wasn't a question of wanting to meet him because it was Arthur Miller; it was a kind of astonishment that I could meet someone who was so deeply embedded in the psyche of my artistic development.”
“I don't recall making a conscious decision to become an actor. I just remember winning a prize at a theatre festival when I was 17 and saying: 'Oh, that's what I have to do.'”
“I spent the majority of time at school trying to break the rules. I would climb to the top of buildings; I even burned a building down once - not intentionally, just because I was interested in fire. I remember going through the rule book, ticking off the ones I had broken and looking for the ones I hadn't.”
“Mozart's seeming frothiness is just a light touch with very profound material. That's what I've found working on 'The Magic Flute.'”
“For some years, I've been very interested in the relationship between science and art.”
“Infinity is a way to describe the incomprehensible to the human mind. In a way, it notates a mystery. That kind of mystery exists in relationships. A lifetime is not enough to know someone else. It provides a brief glimpse.”
“For years, I wasn't in the least bit interested in opera.”
“I don't really think about a visual aspect to the work at all; I just think about making the piece. And everything that occurs visually comes out of the subject matter you are dealing with so that I find it difficult to treat the visual element as a separate entity.”
“I find all food irresistible. I have friends who live in the mountains in France. One of them sells vegetables, and to walk through her garden when everything is bursting out - it's impossible not to eat something.”
“I allow people to create, but I'm also marshalling everybody, which is difficult for my creativity, as I'm like a referee. Everybody else is kicking a ball. It is very messy. From the mess, though, you refine what is there.”
“I feel that if you can play on the streets or in a comedy club, then in a theatre it's a doddle because you've got an audience.”
“So you might say, 'Why do you end up making theatre in a world in which there is already too much of that? Creating layer upon layer of artifice?' Perhaps the function is to pierce through that cloud and show reality - so the function of art is to make things - to show: 'Hang on, this is real.'”
“When my mother was dying, I cooked for her. One of the things I realised was that the smell and look of the food was key. I concentrated on how it looked on the plate. Even if the amount was small, it gave her a nourishment of a different kind.”
“The brain constantly assures us, reassures us, that we are in control. But the closer you look, the more questions you have about it.”
“Shostakovich's final pieces, his quartets, are scratching the surface of another world.”
“I'm passionate about music, and I feel that theatre has an extraordinarily musical ability in the way it operates on the audience.”
“'Mnemonic' is a play about memory.”
“In my opinion, there's nothing new in the theatre, ever. Theatre-makers are thieves, in the honourable tradition of charlatans. They fake it very, very well indeed for the entertainment of everybody else.”
“If you're an actor, go out and act.”