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" Chicago is not a very fashion-driven place. Nobody says, 'Oh, you've got to come see these fabulous people!' Nobody cares. "

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" 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. "

" Oh my God, if I know anything, I know I'm gonna die! I never forget that. I know I'll be forgotten in a minute, and that's just fine with me. "

" I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That's the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein. "

" Clay Aiken is amazing beyond that glorious voice. Turns out he is an excellent comic actor and a master of character. "

" I am drawn to the mystery of marriage. You can never know what the contract is between two people, and that is a very strong subject. I think it may be my subject. "

" All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it. "

" As a director, my job is, and always has been, divided into a number of things: dealing with the crew, the money and the studio, and the marketing and publicity. These are all different jobs that have to be learned and done as well as possible. The celebrity part rarely touches a director. "

" The degree to which you're peculiar and different is the degree to which you must learn to hear people thinking. Just in self-defense you have to learn, where is their kindness? Where is their danger? Where is their generosity? "

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

" It's not a film-maker's job to explain his technique, but to tell his story the best way he can. "

" 'Streetcar' is no longer about the moment at all. There is no Blanche DuBois anywhere; south, north, east or west. We don't have Blanche DuBois at the moment. But we have Willy Loman; everywhere we look we see Willy Loman. We are Willy Loman. We're on Facebook; we need to be known; we're selling all the time. "

" 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. "

" I asked a shrink: 'Everything is so great. Why am I still so angry?' He said, 'Anger doesn't go away.' I always thought it was kind of a good engine. "

" Limitations are inspiring: they lead to thinking, so I don't mind them. "

" I think that to make something alive, instead of on a page, is an honorable task. And it turns me on. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You could say that it's in talking movies that inner life begins to appear. You can see things happen to the faces of people that were neither planned nor rehearsed. "

" The thing about being an outsider... is that it teaches you to hear what people are thinking because you're constantly looking for the people who just don't give a damn. "

" I believed early and still believe that everybody who can act can do it already, just they don't know how and don't want to talk about it. "

" Plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time. You can't read it three times and say, 'OK, I got it. I know what's happening.' "

" It took me forever, learning improvisation, because I had studied with Lee Strasberg - I dropped out of Chicago and went to his classes in New York for a couple of years, once or twice a week. What I didn't realize was I was learning directing because he wasn't all that good about acting, not for me. "

" My first memory in the world is my gym teacher ripping my mother's necklace off her neck and throwing it out the window and her running downstairs to go after it. I have no memory before that. I was 4. My father had a lot of girlfriends and my mother had a lot of boyfriends. "

" I think the main thing about comedy and humor is that it's impossible and always was impossible to define. "

" Nerves provide me with energy... It's when I don't have them, when I feel at ease, that's when I get worried. "

" I never understand when people say, 'Do you do comedy or tragedy?' I don't think they're very much different. They both have to be true, and there isn't a great play in the world that doesn't have funny parts to it - as 'Salesman' does, as 'King Lear' does. The whole idea is to reflect life in some way, which means surely you have to have both. "

" Very often when a story really holds us, it gets pushed away because it's too close for comfort. "

" I had a high school girlfriend whose mother gave us theater tickets, so I saw the second night performance of 'A Streetcar Named Desire.' My girl and I could not get up during intermission, we were so stunned. To this day it's the only thing I've seen on stage that's 100 percent real and 100 percent poetic simultaneously. "

" I was standing right behind Marilyn, completely invisible, when she sang 'Happy birthday, Mr. President.' And indeed, the corny thing happened: Her dress split for my benefit, and there was Marilyn, and yes, indeed, she didn't wear any underwear. "

" I'm an enormous fan of 'The West Wing.' It was one of the very few shows I would watch every week. "