Quotes from Robert Wilson

Actors always start with the voice and language. That's wrong. They should start with the body. The body is an actor's most important resource.

It's important that we have the traditional operas and the repertory, but we should also have something new.

When you're playing King Lear, you have to have a little humour, or you will have no tragedy when the king dies.

My tax dollar, which goes to New York State Council on the Arts, is by and large only spent to fund people from the state of New York! And you want to be the cultural capital of the world?

New York is very provincial. They're very cut-off; they don't have an awareness of so much that is going on in the world.

As a very young man growing up in Texas, usually I got a shotgun or cowboy boots for Christmas.

If you slow things down, you notice things you hadn't seen before.

If we lose our culture, we lose our memory.

The mind is a muscle.

I think mystery... allows us time to dream.

I'm supposed to be the guy who hates naturalism.

I had no idea I was going to have a career in the theater. I did not plan it.

The reason you work as an artist is to stay open and ask questions.

I don't see anyone for the first hour and a half that I'm awake. I don't like to talk, and I don't like to hear any sounds. People know not to bother me! I use that time to read, and make lists and notes of things I have to do later in the day.

I try to present something that is full of time. Not timeless, but full of time. I never like a work where we try to update it, but it's still not interesting to see a work that is dated. If one is successful, then a work can be full of time. And time is very complex.

I collect rocks from all over the world. I have a ring of stones that date to 3500 B.C. It's like a little Stonehenge.

Increasingly, I find myself drawn to classic forms - to Euripides, Shakespeare and grand opera.

I think that I've always been a kind of structured person.

I've always thought abstractly - through theme and variations rather than narrative.

My work should be seen as poetry.

Light is architectural. It is sculptural.