Quotes from Robert Wilson

There hasn't been a great romance in my life.

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

I met a 13-year-old black child, Raymond, who had never been to school and had never learnt any words, yet it seemed to me that he was intelligent. It became apparent after a short period that Raymond thought in terms of visual signs and movements.

When we look back at the Mayans or ancient Egypt, we look at their art.

I've always been attracted to classic patterns in architecture, music and drama.

I did a masterclass at the Juilliard and asked the students, 'Can you stand?' 'Sure.' 'Can you walk?' 'Sure.' They couldn't. They had never really thought about it.

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

I think that in my plays you can come in for 20 minutes and get something out of it. I'd like to do a play that would run for days. I don't think time is that important. Nature doesn't hurry the sky, the changing clouds and sunsets.

I'm an artist, not a philosopher.

I had dinner with Marlene Dietrich in the early 1970s. I went to pick her up and she had someone with her, a dreadful man. He was writing a book about her, and he said to her, 'You're so cold when you perform,' and she said, 'You didn't listen to the voice.' She said the difficulty was to place the voice with the face.

What was very interesting to me about Clementine Hunter's work is that she couldn't read or write, and she has recorded history of the plantation life and the southern part of the U.S. - the cotton harvests, pecan picking, washing clothes, funerals, marriages - in pictures.

Chairs are like sculpture.

Christopher Knowles, Buechner, Heiner Mueller, Burroughs, Chekhov, Shakespeare - it's all one body of work.

I do still collect chairs.

I say I like to be alone, yet I am always surrounded by people.

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

My method is much like choreography. I don't sit at a table. I work in a room with people.

Counterpoint is difficult. I have been doing it since the beginning of my career. But it is not just taking any opposite. It is finding the right opposite.

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

There are schools teaching 'stage decoration' as a subject, and they actually call it that. I say: 'Burn those schools!'

Most theater tells you what to think.

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.

My work is formal, not based on psychology.

The French, not the Americans, commissioned 'Einstein on the Beach.'