Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" 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.' "

Robert Wilson

You

Long

Work

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

" I learned loudness from working with Lou Reed. "

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

Robert Wilson

Lose

Audience

" 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! "

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

" I don't see much difference between living and working. I think living is a part of my work. People often say, 'How can you work so much?' I don't think about it as work. I think of it as a way to live. "

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

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

" 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. "

" My work should be seen as poetry. "

" 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. "

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

" Chairs are like sculpture. "

Robert Wilson

Chairs

Sculpture

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

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

" 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. "

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

" At the end of the 1960s, I was part of the downtown theatrical movement in New York that was making work in alleyways, garages, gyms, churches, non-traditional spaces. The idea was to get away from the illusion of the conventional theatre. But then I thought, what's wrong with illusion? "

" 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

" The mind is a muscle. "

Robert Wilson

Muscle

Mind

" I think that opera in Europe is 30 years ahead of America. There is a broader range of material presented to the public. They value contemporary opera. "

" If you see the sunset, does it have to mean something? If you hear the birds singing does it have to have a message? "

" 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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" It's important that we have the traditional operas and the repertory, but we should also have something new. "

" Everything in Wagner's work - the music, the acting, the staging - stemmed from the text. Everything served to interpret the text. "