“I know that they want certain things and they’re in a certain room and they smell like this and they look like that.”

What I’ve learned in the last few years is that I am merely a storyteller.

I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn’t matter.

I try not to write more than two or three, I try to just write one if possible

I think after we ingest some of the cruelty of the world, it takes years off of our lives, but it also gives us wisdom and a little grace, hopefully a sense of compassion.

Sometimes when I’m directing, the stage manager will have a good idea and that’s okay with me.

The same way you can hear a song in your head even if there isn’t a radio playing; the same way you can hear those blackbirds flying when they’re not in the sky

I don’t like it when it’s consumer advocacy, like how you should spend your $60. Great criticism is a kind of literature.

It just happens quicker and faster now.

If I tried to write that it would just be false. Or I’d have someone enter with a machine gun.

Snow settles in the liver. The bowels grow thick with humidity.

I feel that I’d rather know an actors’ work, or have an instinct about them and sit down and have coffee with them, or I’ll see them in something and I’ll see if I can get along with them in some way, shape, or form.

I’ve never really felt good at the parties, but I have enough friends now that I feel social, I used to feel very antisocial, but I think the theater helps.

I think I’m a little more daunted by when the machinery of the play is really huge.

So I started to think like, “well if I’m going to fight against this, I should learn how to direct”.

I’ll take a break for a couple weeks for a project that is paying me money like a television project which I try to stay away from just to stay financially ahead of the game.

The scent goes right to your stomach.

Being such a tomboy growing up, that was one thing that changed me as a person, as well. It broadened me, like me cracking myself open in a certain way.

If you resist confusion,you are always confused. We think that we resist certain states because they are there, but actually they are there because we resist them.

In a certain sense, if I have an idea about you that I believe, I’ve degraded you. I’ve made you into something very small. This is the way of human beings, this is what we do to each other.

They know deep down that certain things in their lives are working or aren’t working, that certain parts of their lives are functional and others are dysfunctional. But sometimes, as human beings, we don’t want to know what’s not convenient. So we pretend not to know.

At a certain point we need to grow up; we need to look inside ourselves for our inner guidance. There are things most human beings know; they just don’t want to know them.

I’ve seen many films, and many beautiful films. And I try to keep a certain level of quality of my films. I don’t do commercials,

To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.

One of the central lessons I have learned after a half century of working in the developing world is that the replacement of fear by hope is probably the single most powerful trampoline of progress.