Quotes from Robert Lepage

Technology can become a crutch. Sometimes it's there just to hide behind when you're shy of what you're trying to say.

There's not a system better than another. There are some people better than others. I'm not anti-democracy, but there's no real system yet that has proven itself to be the right one.

During the tour of 'Circulations,' we spent a lot of time in Canadian Chinatowns. I was fascinated by the idea that you can cross the road and enter this dream world, this vision of China.

I haven't become a satanist, but I am fascinated by the character of the devil.

When I went into the conservatory at 17, then I was able to open up and accept everything about myself and show my feminine side as well as my masculine.

People think that it is negative, but in fact, chaos can be very fertile.

The thing that's interesting about Trump is that when you read 'Coriolanus,' you'd be tempted to draw parallels. But I don't do that.

We have a tendency in Quebec - and I include myself in this - to describe ourselves using the past. We're always nostalgic.

I'm a follower of people not necessarily connected with the theater.

When I directed the 'Ring' cycle at the Metropolitan Opera in New York recently, there were people texting all through the show. But theatre isn't a communication device: it's a communion.

Theater originated with technology. People forget that.

I never questioned if I was effeminate or not. That didn't matter in the theatre.

Opera is a very stimulating place to work, and I believe it offers the most intense theatrical experience possible.

If you're going to do a show about somebody who dumped you, it's much richer if you have three characters dealing with different aspects of that theme. There is more space for people to identify with it.

I was brought up by a father and mother who were radically different.

Chaos is a good thing.

My taste comes from when I was 12 years old and saw Genesis or Laurie Anderson or some performance artist who had put paint on himself. I've seen a lot of theater, but that's not what woke up my taste to become a director; nontheatrical things were much more theatrical than the theater I was seeing.

Of course theater will always be associated intimately to literature, but the themes or whatever have to penetrate you by the senses. Theater is a sensuous experience, and that's its main difference from film or any other dramatic art.

If Darwin's theories are true, then we have within us the physical memory of when we were fish or apes.

Without meaning to sound crass, I've never had any psychological... help. It's because I feel my work is so revealing about who I am and what I am trying to understand about myself. It's a therapeutic process.

There's nothing sadder than when things happen the way you've planned them, because we don't have a lot of imagination, you know.

In Grade 2, when we had to do a presentation in front of the class, I'd always do things about Ireland or Italy. I could draw maps; I could name all the capitals: I was completely drawn to other lands. I discovered with time that it's a thirst for other people, for otherness, for something fascinating and mysterious.

A puppet, for example, is just a piece of wood, a couple of rivets, but put them together, and if you know how to do it, and the audience's imagination joins in with this, then a miracle will come out of that machine. That is what we and the audience do in the theatre - we create miracles in that space.

A show is good when there is a meeting of time and space, when time and space become irrelevant.