Quotes from Simon McBurney

When the brain gets lost, it doesn't stop working. It tries to makes sense of things. It begins to speculate and guess, and that's when things open up. That's exciting.

I don't have what German directors call 'a concept' - a solid, fixed sense of the pattern that you should impose on the given work. I always get the feeling that I am raking up the earth rather than laying down the concrete.

'Mnemonic' is a play about memory.

Theatre is about the collective imagination... Everything I use on-stage is driven by the subject matter and what you might call the text - but that text can be anything, from a fragment of movement or music to something you see on a TV.

I sometimes feel I would like to do crazy things with 'Endgame,' where someone says something, but the words, instead of being spoken, are written words projected out of their mouth.

Mozart makes us care about people in flashes of lightning.

The way the mind decodes music is an individual mystery. But the physical circumstances can change the way you listen.

As a child, acting just seemed like a natural extension of my love of play - and if you've forgotten how to play, you shouldn't be an actor.

I'm naturally attracted to something I don't understand because when you try to deal with something you don't understand, it opens a door into another world.

In the theatre, because you're all looking at the same thing in the same space, consciousness is no longer individual. There is a unified consciousness. Until you look and project what is happening, it doesn't exist; the audience are the ones making the theatre, not the players.

The very beautiful and very touching thing about opera singers is they are very willing to do whatever you want. Unlike actors, who constantly want to know why they're doing something, opera singers will sort of follow you into the fires of hell.

I try to push a single idea to its absolute limit. So for all of those ideas that existed in the story, you attempt to find a physical realisation in the space.

For years, I wasn't in the least bit interested in opera.

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.

The repeated action of working and playing acts like a trowel that uncovers a hidden structure under the earth. It is an action that deepens and develops.

I've had various people close to me die, and I don't necessarily find the idea of death purely depressing.

I think it was a desire to be able to find my own voice. I think that was the big urge within me.