Diane Paulus quotes:

We're a depraved civilization. All this technology, all the computer games and the iPhones... nobody will sit for art anymore. What a dismaying state of humanity.

Opera is the ultimate art form. It has singing and music and drama and dance and emotion and story.

In Elizabethan England or classical Athens... theater was at the center of, not culture, but society and politics and religion and civic engagement. Those things have a different audience.

For me, the reason why people go to a mountaintop or go to the edge of the ocean is to look at something larger than themselves. That feeling of awe, of going to a cathedral, it's all about feeling lost in something bigger than oneself. To me, that's the definition of spectacle.

Music is rhythm, and all theater is rhythm. It's about tempo and change and pulse, whether you're doing a verse play by Shakespeare or a musical.

I'm always interested in working with people who are good team players - that are selfless that way in their interests and dedication to the project.

I had to drop a boulder to wake people up about the A.R.T. We've done that, and now we have audiences again who want cutting-edge work, who want to be challenged, but who also won't be falling asleep at the theater.

I listen to music, I read scripts, and I know pretty intuitively if I can unlock it in a way. It's actually very liberating when you understand that not everything is for you.

Theatre and opera were always the twin kingdoms that I felt I had to conquer, because they were my parents' favorites.

At the core of what I'm doing is a belief in the audience, a belief that populism doesn't mean dumbing down theater, but rather giving the audience a voice and a role in experiencing theater.

As a director, I never feel that I have the answers.

Being a director, whether you're in rehearsal or you're in auditions or you're in a creative meeting, is so much to me about being present in the moment. There's a sense of time stopping.

When you're a freelance director, you are hired to create the art, and it kind of stops there.

I had this epiphany that I like the interaction with people. I wanted to make things happen at a grassroots level.

I'm sorry, but to ask an audience these days to invest three hours in a show requires your heroine be an understandable and fully rounded character.

I think in our culture there's been a tendency for people to blame the audience. There is a tendency in our industry to say, 'The audience has left the building. People don't want culture anymore.'

I grew up with a beautiful gold harp sitting in our living room. My older sister played it.

I'm always interested in looking - historically - at how theater can animate history and how all of that can make us engage with our lives in an enriching way.

Creativity and the world of the imagination - the beauty of what we see as a child and the kind of play that we experience as a child - can be a way for us to survive tough times.

Im always interested in working with people who are good team players - that are selfless that way in their interests and dedication to the project.

My generation of director has no illusions that we are going to be fed and cared for by subsidized theater in America.

I think actually what keeps the intensity manageable - it's a little counterintuitive - is that it's changing all the time. Every week is different for me.

It's freeing to not be caught up in your own personal baggage.

I really challenge every actor at the beginning of a process, and I always say, 'I have an idea that I'm going to bring to the table. I hope and expect that you will have an idea and bring it to the table. But the way I really want to work is that together we're going to have a third idea that is better than either of our ideas.'

Im always interested in looking - historically - at how theater can animate history and how all of that can make us engage with our lives in an enriching way.

The musical theater is a glorious and distinctly American innovation in the history of theater.

I don't want to be in an art bubble.

Art cannot be looked at as an elite, sacred event anymore. It has to be embraced as an accessible, popular form, which is what I believe theater is at its roots.

I've gotten to the point that I don't even know what tomorrow brings. When I'm teaching, obviously I'm in town for the class every week.

Creativity is a form of knowledge.