Director

Never let people see what you want, because they will not let you have it. Never let anybody see what you feel, because it gives them too much power. You're probably better off not showing weakness whenever you can avoid it, because they'll go for you.

A play, after all, is a mystery. There's no narration. And as soon as there's no narration, it's open to interpretation. It must be interpreted. You don't have a choice... Each play can become many things.

I keep coming back to it, over and over - adultery and cheating. It's the most interesting problem in the theater. How else do you get Oedipus? That's the first cheating in the theater.

There's nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you're meant to do. It's like falling in love.

I still think that luck is what a lot of the good things come from. It's simply the luck of where you are, when.

People, by and large, would rather be talking than listening.

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

Any good movie is filled with secrets.

I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things.

There's nothing in the American dream about character. It's a serious flaw.

Everybody wants to be known. Everybody's a Kardashian.

For a director, a musical is a special kind of hell.

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

A movie is like a person. Either you trust it or you don't.

We are being entertained all the time - in the bathroom, on the train, in our beds. Sure, there is a smaller audience for theater. But we know from radio that entertainment never goes away, it just changes. And more power to it.

Here's the most mysterious thing to me. I look back at those first plays I did and the first movies I did, and I only have one question, which is, 'What was I so confident about? Where did I get that?

Comedy is brutal. It's powerful, though.

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.

If you want to be a legend, God help you, it's so easy. You just do one thing. You can be the master of suspense, say. But if you want to be as invisible as is practical, then it's fun to do a lot of different things.