Robert Wilson

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

birds you sunset singing

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?'

say me important want

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

back look egypt art

Usually in theater, the visual repeats the verbal. The visual dwindles into decoration. But I think with my eyes. For me, the visual is not an afterthought, not an illustration of the text. If it says the same thing as the words, why look? The visual must be so compelling that a deaf man would sit though the performance fascinated.

eyes look me man

I want to work with Jay-Z.

jay-z want work

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.

diary will doing time

I never studied theatre; I learned it by doing it. If I had studied theatre, I would not be making the kind of theatre I am making.

i-am doing never theatre

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.

think you work people

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?'

thought me dance way

If you slow things down, you notice things you hadn't seen before.

slow down things you

The first thing you must know as an actor or director is the space you will inhabit. See the architecture; imagine where things can happen in space.

know you architecture space

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.

finding doing beginning difficult

Light is architectural. It is sculptural.

sculptural architectural light

I say I like to be alone, yet I am always surrounded by people.

i-am alone say people

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

start silence work way

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.

girl business mother time

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

i-think person think always

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

burn say stage decoration

When you're playing King Lear, you have to have a little humour, or you will have no tragedy when the king dies.

king will you tragedy

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

where up community museums