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" Some years ago, I was invited to speak in Houston, Texas. They said I was a founder of 'postmodern theatre'. So I said to my office, 'This is ridiculous for me to go and speak about postmodern theatre when I don't know what it means, but... they're paying me a lot of money, so I'll go.' "

Robert Wilson

Texas

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" I think that I've always been a kind of structured person. "

" Light is architectural. It is sculptural. "

" Yes, I've been in love, but I guess I'm too involved with myself and my work. I think I'm in love with my work, and I'm in love with the people I work with. "

" I try to present something that is full of time. Not timeless, but full of time. I never like a work where we try to update it, but it's still not interesting to see a work that is dated. If one is successful, then a work can be full of time. And time is very complex. "

" Sometimes, when we're very, very still, we're more aware of movement than when we make a lot of movement outwardly. "

" I'm supposed to be the guy who hates naturalism. "

" I met a 13-year-old black child, Raymond, who had never been to school and had never learnt any words, yet it seemed to me that he was intelligent. It became apparent after a short period that Raymond thought in terms of visual signs and movements. "

Robert Wilson

Short

Child

" Increasingly, I find myself drawn to classic forms - to Euripides, Shakespeare and grand opera. "

" New York is very provincial. They're very cut-off; they don't have an awareness of so much that is going on in the world. "

" The landscape of Texas is in all my work. It's that light; it's that sky. "

" I do still collect chairs. "

" What interested me was dance - the way that it was constructed with time-space constructions, and that it was abstract. I always thought: 'Why couldn't theater be that way? Or an opera?' "

Robert Wilson

Always

Thought

" To me, what is important in the theater is that we don't want to make a conclusion. We don't want to make a statement, don't want to say what something is. We want to ask, 'What is it?' "

Robert Wilson

Something

Ask

" I think that in my plays you can come in for 20 minutes and get something out of it. I'd like to do a play that would run for days. I don't think time is that important. Nature doesn't hurry the sky, the changing clouds and sunsets. "

" When works get too intellectual, they lose their intensity. "

" Chairs are like sculpture. "

Robert Wilson

Chairs

Sculpture

" My mother was a great typist. She said she loved to type because it gave her time to think. She was a secretary for an insurance company. She was a poor girl; she'd grown up in an orphanage, and she went to a business college - and then worked to put her brothers through school. "

" My work should be seen as poetry. "

" I've always thought abstractly - through theme and variations rather than narrative. "

" There are schools teaching 'stage decoration' as a subject, and they actually call it that. I say: 'Burn those schools!' "

" Most artists don't understand what they do, and I don't think we have to. Other people do that better - they understand what I do better than I do! "

" Actors always start with the voice and language. That's wrong. They should start with the body. The body is an actor's most important resource. "

" I think mystery... allows us time to dream. "

" I grew up in a town where there were no galleries, no museums, no theaters - a very religious, ultraconservative community. "

Robert Wilson

Town

Where

" The French, not the Americans, commissioned 'Einstein on the Beach.' "

" We're so afraid to lose the audience. Let the audience go. "

Robert Wilson

Lose

Audience

" Most theater tells you what to think. "

" One of the few things that will remain of this time is what artists are doing. They are the journal and the diary of our time. "

" My work has always dealt with a kind of space that allows one to daydream. "

" The reason you work as an artist is to stay open and ask questions. "