Robert Wilson

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.

Light is architectural. It is sculptural.

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

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.

One of the few things that will remain of this time is what artists are doing. They are the journal and the diary of our time.

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.

Sometimes, when we're very, very still, we're more aware of movement than when we make a lot of movement outwardly.

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

To me, what is important in the theater is that we don't want to make a conclusion. We don't want to make a statement, don't want to say what something is. We want to ask, 'What is it?'

I think that opera in Europe is 30 years ahead of America. There is a broader range of material presented to the public. They value contemporary opera.

In Europe, unlike the States, they have a cultural policy.

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

Some years ago, I was invited to speak in Houston, Texas. They said I was a founder of 'postmodern theatre'. So I said to my office, 'This is ridiculous for me to go and speak about postmodern theatre when I don't know what it means, but... they're paying me a lot of money, so I'll go.'

If you see the sunset, does it have to mean something? If you hear the birds singing does it have to have a message?

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

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

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?

The landscape of Texas is in all my work. It's that light; it's that sky.

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.