Harold Prince quotes:

Artistic self-indulgence is the mark of an amateur. The temptation to make scenes, to appear late, to call in sick, not to meet deadlines, not to be organized, is at heart a sign of your own insecurity and at worst the sign of an amateur.

I really don't spend time thinking about the past. I think about the future. I'm not stopping.

I always liked the visuals to be choice and at the same time minimalist. And, I love black boxes. After all, that's what theatre is, it's an empty space, and it's both limited and unlimited because the space is the space, but what you can do with people's imaginations is really endless.

I'm crazy about Dublin. If you went back 3,000 years in my ancestry you wouldn't find a drop of Irish blood in the veins, but I love the place.

Collaboration is just, really, a group of people getting in a room with their eye on a very similar prize and wanting to come out with the same show. The director, ultimately, is the guy in front of whom the buck stops. So, he has to have the courage to prevail. But, he has got to have a huge amount of respect for his collaborators.

You can't just keep recycling revivals. And you can't keep betting on the efforts of guys like me who've been around. You have to take the next step and bet on the next generation.

The idea that I have to be on the same side of the fence as Dan Quayle is cruelly depressing to me, but the truth is, I believe in family values.

You could argue that 'Sweeney Todd' was romantic, if you looked closely at it, but it didn't impart that to its audiences. But it's large, and it's melodramatic, and it's a style I like to work in periodically.

I don't look back. I look forward and plan new shows. That's really feeding the most important part of working in the theater.

I was there when the quote-unquote golden age of musical theater was flourishing. I met everybody who worked in theater or was famous in theater from the '40s on.

Nobody has yet proven that taking a chance and doing something unique that an audience isn't used to is a bad idea. What the theater lacks is that kind of courage.

The idea is to work and to experiment. Some things will be creatively successful, some things will succeed at the box office, and some things will only - which is the biggest only - teach you things that see the future. And they're probably as valuable as any of your successes.

All these actors who died before I was born, all the theaters and the artistic movements - all that stuff fills you up and makes you feel like you're the inheritor of all this information and of all its passion.

Criticism is valuable... and self-congratulatory experiences are not.

Ethel Merman would stay with a show for years and tour with it. So would Mary Martin, the great stars. They recognized the value of that success and nurtured it. Now, you come from Hollywood, you play 12 weeks and go away. I don't think that's the best policy.

I'm just really trying to say what I really mean, which is: 'Your eye's on the prize, your eye's on the future. It's nice to know that a lot of wonderful things have happened to your life and that so much of it has been successful. That's great, but the work is really what makes it fun - and that has to be the future.'

I've never been able to understand where great artists come from.

I saw 'On The Town' about nine times. I discovered it. I loved it. I was in college.

I love big, bold, truthful theater - the tradition of Victorian theater.

'Showboat' is the quintessential family show.

You think, 'Musicals, they must always be romantic' - You'd be surprised how few of them historically have ever been romantic.

The perfect expression of receiving a lifetime award is to be working when they're handing it out.

I don't compare shows. It's very simple. I don't live in the past. If there's any secret to my longevity, it's living in the future. And a little bit in the present.

I remember when people actually wore coats and ties to theatre every night. They don't anymore. It's very different.

There's no lack of talent out there. I suspect there is a lack of creative guidance, and that would not be solely the responsibility of a director but also a producer.

You do a show to be a hit and hopefully run a couple of years.

I always had a good time in theatre, even when shows don't turn out as well as I'd like.

There are wonderful composers and librettists out there. It's the lack of creative producers that is troubling.

I'm always glad to see somebody rethink something rather than reproduce something I did.

I think when you start analyzing trends and start making shows for a particular audience, you are making a fatal move. I think that's why people are doing too many revivals, that's why there's a plethora of rock musicals. There's room for everything, but not room for too much of anything.

I wouldn't want to be just pigeonholed as an extravagant director.

I really wish people - maybe it's naive - wish people had priorities and were willing to be artistic patrons.

I was nine. I saw Orson Welles in 'Julius Caesar.' It was involving, emotional, imaginative. I've never forgotten it.

The truth of the matter is that I have lasted a long time, and with it comes both good and bad things. One of the good things is that no one can ever take my career away from me. No one can ever say, 'You can't be in the theater any more.'

Despite the successes, you remember the failures - rather lovingly.

I've always loved Victorian melodrama. And I've always liked larger-than-life theater, providing it's truthful and honest. I like what the theater can provide in energy and bombast - I enjoy it when it's large, and by that I don't mean in size, I mean in emotions. Shakespeare did that.

I got successful awfully quick, and I wanted it... But I do think there is responsibility to move the musical theater form forward. I think you always have to be aware of the work that came before and build on that.

When I started producing, it was George Abbott directing and he would let me do the scenery. He just wanted to know where the doors were - the entrances, the exits; the tables, the props - and then I would hire the designer. I took charge of the visuals - scenery and costumes and so on. And, the shows looked wonderful.

Throwing money at something doesn't really create - forgive me that onerous word - art.

Everything can't be a postage-stamp-sized project. Everything can't be a chamber piece. Musicals aren't even meant to be that, or identified with it... It's none of it simple.

A star may guarantee business, but the tradeoff is a very short run.

Audiences are quite happy to be astonished, and they don't care who does that astonishing.

I didn't go into the theater to be a producer, I went into the theater to be a director.

I don't like abrasion while I'm working. I don't thrive on chaos. I enjoy what I'm doing, and it seems to work better when I am enjoying it.

I don't think there's a defined contemporary American musical, do you?

I have a terrible memory because I'm not interested in the past. It's done, it's done.

I like to do everything you can possibly do before you go into rehearsal, because once we are in rehearsal or on the stage there will be a problem I didn't anticipate. It's really good to think we got it all nailed - of course you've never got it all nailed.

I would like to see more new productions of new material by new composers/lyricists/book writers. I would like to see people take more chances. I think because everything costs so much they're not taking the chances they used to.

I'm a pragmatic man. I'll veer on the dangerous side, because I love dangerous subjects, but I won't shoot a show in the foot.

It's a terrible shame if you're born the brightest guy in your class. If you're not, then you have to hustle-and that's good.

It's nice to stay up nights worrying about the material, and not about the investors who gave you $10 million to do your musical.

I've seen a lot of 'Show Boats,' but I've never seen the one that thoroughly satisfies me.

Most of the big money people don't know what would interest an audience if you did it. They only know what interested the audience last time.

Nothing is staged exactly as it was, because I can't remember - and I consider that an advantage.

Producers want to put their music behind revivals but I don't think that's a good trend for the theater at all.

The truth is, for some absurd reason, no one is willing to admit that the interests of the producers and the theater owners are not the same.

We've got to find a way to protect the process of making musical theater.

What's missing in the musical theater is producers willing to nurture new work, raise the money and put it on.

When I was a producer, the fun of the show was waking up with a hit and enjoying the period after the show opens. The fun of a director stops the day it opens. No matter if it's a success or a failure, it's not a whole lot of fun anymore.

The musical has always been in jeopardy - until - or was in jeopardy until it was realised that it is probably the safest living theatre art form.