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" I'm more attracted to art that smashes than I am attracted to art that sits on a shelf and is beautiful. "

George C. Wolfe

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" The hardest thing about a musical is making sure everybody is working on the same damn show. That is the monster. "

George C. Wolfe

" There is a real affection for these human beings on these stage that O'Neill really had. Out of that affection comes a lot of humor, which is unexpected when you think of 'The Iceman Cometh.' "

George C. Wolfe

" There's no place more theatrical than history. "

George C. Wolfe

" Generally, the realm in which black playwrights have been allowed to achieve success has been social realism or musicals. "

George C. Wolfe

" I'm interested in exploring how an individual maintains a sense of power in a world that tends to make individuals feel powerless. "

George C. Wolfe

" I want to create a theater that looks, feels, and smells like America. "

George C. Wolfe

" Surviving failure is one thing. Surviving success is... is challenging, with the consequences and what you lose along the way. "

George C. Wolfe

" You've got to make the rehearsal room very safe. You can't bully people, because if you bully people, they're going to freeze and lock up. "

George C. Wolfe

" I came to New York to write and direct, and when I got here, a lot of my rage came out. "

George C. Wolfe

" When I was on dialysis, I willed myself to do 'On the Town.' It accesses my most childlike, joyful love of theater. "

George C. Wolfe

" One of the things I learned very early on was that if you cast the show correctly, and if you've created the right energy in the room, the solution is also in the room. The solution doesn't necessarily come from someone, but if everybody is working in a very steadfast and rigorous way, then everything you're looking for is in the room. "

George C. Wolfe

" Always, when I do a play, there's got to be an equation of risks and potential failure. When you're working on a new play, it's like, 'How the hell do I do this, and do we have the time?' All of these huge questions engage, hopefully, the smartest part of me. And then when you're doing a revival, I went, 'Well, somebody's already solved it.' "

George C. Wolfe

" I love working with actors who will just go, 'Oh O.K., let's try it and see where it goes,' and 'Let's see what we can discover.' "

George C. Wolfe

" Our lives are connected in ways we can't imagine. They're connected even before we know they're connected. "

George C. Wolfe

" Commercial theater, in its agenda to appeal to everybody, is often at the expense of the unique vision of the artist. "

George C. Wolfe

" You can go see ballet in its purity; you can go to a recital to hear music by itself. But what the American musical does so thrillingly is bastardize these forms into something that is exhilarating and compelling and deeply moving. "

George C. Wolfe

" When 'The Normal Heart' first appeared, the sense of urgency was so important. "

George C. Wolfe

" I don't go, like, 'Hmm, I'm now going to create something for the black community.' I just feel this compelling urge. I just feel myself drawn to stories that I feel have a potency and immediacy. "

George C. Wolfe

" Doing any kind of culture in America in which you are not trying to affirm a European aesthetic is war. "

George C. Wolfe

" I viewed black musicals before 'Jelly' as a form of cultural strip mining. The exterior remained, but all the culture that signified where the people had come from and their connection to the earth was absent. "

George C. Wolfe

" I'm convinced whenever something opens on Broadway, it's a miracle. It's a miracle that people survived. "

George C. Wolfe

" Musicals spring forth from minstrelsy, vaudeville, melodramas; it was all these things combined to create the form. "

George C. Wolfe

" Theater should address the stories of its communities, or I don't know why it's here. "

George C. Wolfe

" If you have the talent and passion and commitment, you shouldn't be locked out of the room. "

George C. Wolfe

" A musical is what happens when text collides with motion collides with song collides with spectacle. And spectacle can be the human heart; it doesn't necessarily have to be a helicopter crashing. "

George C. Wolfe

" I think all creative people are operating from the fear that, of the best of what they did, will anybody remember it? Will anybody tell stories about them? Will anybody keep those pictures on the mantle long after they are gone? It's why people write stories. It's peoples' grave markers. "

George C. Wolfe

" Producing has empowered me as an artist in a specific way. It's forced a certain kind of maturity. "

George C. Wolfe

" Most musicals are informed by very rigid archetypes. If you get a very sophisticated mind writing them, you sense something else, but it's a folk-art form, really, at its best. At different times, I've tried to push against it as much as I possibly could, but ultimately, it is a folk-art form. "

George C. Wolfe

" If I hadn't told stories, I would've been a historian. "

George C. Wolfe

" I feel like I'm edgy and I'm funny and I got this bite, this outrageousness. "

George C. Wolfe