Quotes from Mike Nichols

'Catch-22' was a nightmare to make, and everybody was unhappy except me.

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

It's very, very corrupting to the spirit, doing comedy. And you have to be almost a saint, like Jack Benny was, like Steve Martin is, to avoid the corrupting of it, because there's very little work where the actual work and the reward are simultaneous, and comedy is that.

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.

Improvisation has to do with exploring something like two brothers in a room together. You find out things about situations by discovering the things that they aren't saying. It's a way to explore scenes. Sometimes it's more useful than others, but it's always there to see if there's anything that you might improve.

I'm in the theater because of two plays: 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and 'Death of a Salesman.'

Most great plays of the past lose their grip on immediacy; on application to our lives right now.

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.

I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That's the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein.

In a weird way, when I was looking back, I didn't know I was going to be a director until I was.

That seems to me the greatest American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.

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

Yes. The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny.

The only safe thing is to take a chance. Play safe and you are dead. Taking risks is the essence of good work, and the difference between safe and bold can only be defined by yourself since no one else knows for what you are hoping when you embark on anything.

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

Take off all your clothes and walk down the street waving a machete and firing an Uzi, and terrified citizens will phone the police and report, "There's a naked person outside!"

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

I never understand when people say, 'Do you do comedy or tragedy?' I don't think they're very much different. They both have to be true, and there isn't a great play in the world that doesn't have funny parts to it - as 'Salesman' does, as 'King Lear' does. The whole idea is to reflect life in some way, which means surely you have to have both.

How beautiful black-and-white is. It's not literal. It's a metaphor automatically, already saying, this is not life, it's ABOUT life.

Limitations are inspiring: they lead to thinking, so I don't mind them.

Any good movie is filled with secrets.

All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it.

It's not a film-maker's job to explain his technique, but to tell his story the best way he can.

There are absolutely almost perfect people who experience no guilt; they don't know what it is. They simply do what they need to do - or want to do - next. They see nothing wrong with it. They feel no guilt. They express no guilt. And it's not even certain what harm they do.