“I thought a director was like a pillow who sat under the writer, suppo...” — John Tiffany Quote

I thought a director was like a pillow who sat under the writer, supporting them and submitting to their vision. It took me a long time to realise that what a writer really wants is a production that matches the play and the writing. It is the only way the play can achieve its full potential.

My need is about communicating the whole, and when the whole is there in the text and in what the actors are doing, then it doesn't need 'frou-frou,' as I call it.

Sometimes on Broadway, you don't know who the investors are, and you end up making a million dollars for somebody awful.

I've never felt opera was a party I've been invited to, and maybe I've got a bit of a chip on my shoulder about it.

'The Iliad' is about a war 1,200 years ago that solved nothing and achieved nothing. Most of our wars achieve very little. But whatever agenda I have gets buried in a work this great. If you're being honest, you realize that, as an artist, you're not a policy maker.

As investors, we want to believe we are smart, insightful and uniquely talented - even though we often fail to do the heavy lifting, put in the long hours, and make the uncomfortable but necessary decisions to achieve success.

Even if we did achieve what we wanted with a very small state, we'd just be resetting the clock back to 1776, and it would roll forward exactly the same way again.

I leave to the militarists the difficult task of trying to explain to us how these wars have served to shape character or to promote the progress of civilization or to achieve the reign of justice on earth. So far, they have not come forward with the explanation.