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" What was very interesting to me about Clementine Hunter's work is that she couldn't read or write, and she has recorded history of the plantation life and the southern part of the U.S. - the cotton harvests, pecan picking, washing clothes, funerals, marriages - in pictures. "

Robert Wilson

Life

History

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" I learned loudness from working with Lou Reed. "

" 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. "

" Chairs are like sculpture. "

Robert Wilson

Chairs

Sculpture

" I never thought about the relationship of my mother, my family, to the content of my work. "

" I'm an artist, not a philosopher. "

Robert Wilson

Artist

Philosopher

" By giving the leadership to the private sector in a capitalistic society, we're going to measure the value of art by how many products we can sell. "

" 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. "

" When we look back at the Mayans or ancient Egypt, we look at their art. "

" 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

" I did a masterclass at the Juilliard and asked the students, 'Can you stand?' 'Sure.' 'Can you walk?' 'Sure.' They couldn't. They had never really thought about it. "

" If we lose our culture, we lose our memory. "

" My work should be seen as poetry. "

" I don't see anyone for the first hour and a half that I'm awake. I don't like to talk, and I don't like to hear any sounds. People know not to bother me! I use that time to read, and make lists and notes of things I have to do later in the day. "

Robert Wilson

Day

People

" The first year I was in New York, I met Martha Graham. She said, 'Well, Mr. Wilson, what do you want to do in life?' I was 21 years old, and I said, 'I have no idea.' And she said, 'If you work long enough and hard enough, you'll find something.' "

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

" 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 had no idea I was going to have a career in the theater. I did not plan it. "

" As a very young man growing up in Texas, usually I got a shotgun or cowboy boots for Christmas. "

" My theater is slow and calm, yet my life is fast and hectic, going in all directions. "

" I've always been attracted to classic patterns in architecture, music and drama. "

" In Europe, unlike the States, they have a cultural policy. "

" Counterpoint is difficult. I have been doing it since the beginning of my career. But it is not just taking any opposite. It is finding the right opposite. "

" The mind is a muscle. "

Robert Wilson

Muscle

Mind

" 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! "

" When I was 12 years old, I went to Natchitoches, La.; it was summer vacation with my family. We visited a plantation, Melrose. And I met an Afro-American woman who was a painter. I already had some idea of what I wanted to do in life, and one of the things that interested me was painting. "

" My work is formal, not based on psychology. "

" My tax dollar, which goes to New York State Council on the Arts, is by and large only spent to fund people from the state of New York! And you want to be the cultural capital of the world? "

" I think by drawing, so I'll draw or diagram everything from a piece of furniture to a stage gesture. I understand things best when they're in graphics, not words. "

" I start any work the same way. I start a rehearsal with silence. "

" 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. "