Quotes from George C. Wolfe

Broadway was very vital back in the '20s. There were probably close to hundreds of productions that opened up through the course of the year and through the course of a Broadway season.

Something that can be so vital at one point can be inconsequential at another. I'm just intrigued by that phenomenon.

In Los Angeles, wealth and poverty are separated by the freeways. In New York, they're next to each other.

I'm more attracted to art that smashes than I am attracted to art that sits on a shelf and is beautiful.

The black experience, which has nothing to do with my play 'Angels in America,' allowed me to understand the Mormon character. He was the character that couldn't come out to his mother. It allowed me to understand emotional and closeted behavior, because you're so acutely aware of how you're perceived.

Confidence comes in going on personal journeys in a public arena and feeling as though you have a right to do that. You have to give yourself permission to discover what you need to discover and not worry about how pretty the journey is. If you're aware of the pretty, you're not going to dig into the mess.

A lot of directors tend to manipulate actors' vulnerability to get what they want, and that can work.

I feel like I'm edgy and I'm funny and I got this bite, this outrageousness.

Certain events make people come out of their little boxes and become part of the whole.

Growing up in the South, I was raised to be a Negro boy. I was acutely aware how other people perceived me, and that informed my behavior. That worked for a period of time, but it could also be suffocating.

I think there's an aspect of my soul, of my personality, that's very suited to directing. I like being in the room with actors; I love creating a safe space and a chaotic space for the discovery to take place. I love creating a sense of community.

I like to knock down walls and allow others to enter.

There are a lot of people who will tell you I'm very ruthless. I'm very fierce. If I feel I'm right, if I feel I've been violated, then I am like a warrior from hell!

On different projects, different pieces of you will show up. Sometimes it's surprising which piece shows up.

Every play is rhythmic control. If you want an audience to go on a journey, it's rhythmic control. You're crafting when they lean in, when they push back, when they breathe, when they surrender.

I'm dancing to the music of the madness inside me.

Every single wave, when I was overwhelmed and poor and struggling in New York, there were these extraordinary people in New York who said, 'Come this way.'

Our lives are connected in ways we can't imagine. They're connected even before we know they're connected.

I'm convinced whenever something opens on Broadway, it's a miracle. It's a miracle that people survived.

Surviving failure is one thing. Surviving success is... is challenging, with the consequences and what you lose along the way.

I'm perpetually interested by living in places as an artist confronting challenges I've never confronted before and approaching them with as much craft and humanity as I can.

If you have the talent and passion and commitment, you shouldn't be locked out of the room.

If you love theatre, do theatre wherever you can, because theatre is theatre, and you can experience it anywhere.

As a person of color, I was trained from very early on to see 'Leave It to Beaver,' 'Gilligan's Island,' or 'Hamlet' and look beyond the specifics of it - whether it be silly white people on an island or a family living in Nowheres or a Danish person - to leap past the specifics and find the human truths that have to do with me.