Casting, to me, is always the same. It's a very important part of a director's job. I pick people that I sense I'd like to be in a room with and will enjoy the rehearsal process with because that's the best part.

Actors are smart. They have to feel safe enough to fall and to get back up. My job is to make sure they don't get hurt.

I always have to come back to shows to take out the improvements actors have put in. Laughs are addictive, and sometimes they're good laughs, and sometimes they're bad laughs.

I don't consider myself a flashy director. A lot of times, people will look and don't even know what I do.

My life experience has taught me nothing happens by chance. Even the idea of the ball in a roulette game: it's not chance it ends up in a certain place. It's forces that are at play.

That's part of the requirement for me to be an artist is that you're trying to share your personal existence with others and trying to illuminate modern life, trying to understand life.

I had gone through a near-death experience, and that gives you an insight into how fleeting life is, and what's important.

I think J. S. Bach's music stands among humankind's greatest accomplishments. For me, Bach's music is not only as good as music gets but also as good as it gets, period - as good as existence, reality, life, and the world.