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" It's easier to be cynical and edgy and tough rather than overly emotional. "

George C. Wolfe

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" I absolutely love working on musicals, but anytime I finish a project, I want to move on to something completely different. "

George C. Wolfe

" I'm the most democratic fascist you'll ever meet. I listen to everybody, and then I make a decision. "

George C. Wolfe

" On different projects, different pieces of you will show up. Sometimes it's surprising which piece shows up. "

George C. Wolfe

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

George C. Wolfe

" When I came to New York, I told everyone I was a writer/director, and they said, 'No.' There was a rule. You could be one or the other. They ordained me writer. But then I won the Obie for directing 'Spunk,' and the rules changed. "

George C. Wolfe

" Theater, at the end of the day, is about ideas. It's about very large ideas. And if the play is beautifully written or smartly written and has incredible characters you follow on the journey, you take home these larger ideas. Whether it's 'Angels in America' or 'Lucky Guy' or 'Normal Heart,' you follow this moment-to-moment journey as an audience. "

George C. Wolfe

" My absolutely favorite time of working on a project is the time I spend not knowing what it is. Because the longer you live inside that period, the likelier you are to discover something new. "

George C. Wolfe

" You adjust what you do depending on the actor. You evolve a vocabulary and a way of language and talking with each actor. "

George C. Wolfe

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

George C. Wolfe

" All the things that can happen to an artist regardless of how prepared they are and how smart they are and hard-working they are and attractive - doesn't matter. There's always somebody cuter. There just is. "

George C. Wolfe

" 'You Gotta Have Heart' is one of the most ridiculously perfect, amazing musical comedy songs ever. "

George C. Wolfe

" One thing I tend to do is ask actors tons and tons of questions to try to get at what they're thinking but also to expose to them whatever box they've placed their characters in - to blow up that box so the journey can begin. "

George C. Wolfe

" Something that can be so vital at one point can be inconsequential at another. I'm just intrigued by that phenomenon. "

George C. Wolfe

" Everybody wants to be remembered for the best of who they are. "

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

" When I was little, I remember rehearsing starving so that when I got to New York I would know how to do it. "

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 pride myself on being available to as many people's stories as I possibly can. "

George C. Wolfe

" In Los Angeles, wealth and poverty are separated by the freeways. In New York, they're next to each other. "

George C. Wolfe

" To me, 'Show Boat' was the first American musical, the first to have the real texture of this country. "

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

" 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

" A lot of '20s musicals were a hodgepodge of melodrama, mixed with operetta and romance, and then some sense of modernism and some sense of irreverence. "

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 was obsessed with New York early on. I was watching sitcoms that were set in or around New York, like 'The Dick Van Dyke Show.' I was always very fascinated with the people who were on 'What's My Line?' and I always had an incredible obsession with the city. "

George C. Wolfe

" I personally am a very big fan of 'Romeo + Juliet.' It had a visceral power to it that I thought was just exhilarating. It was a very arresting and very disturbing and deeply compelling version of the play. "

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 love working with a set designer because, in many respects, you meet the set designer before you meet the actors. So it's a chance for me as a director to figure out what I'm thinking and to explore how the space is going to actually be activated. "

George C. Wolfe

" Certain events make people come out of their little boxes and become part of the whole. "

George C. Wolfe

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

George C. Wolfe