“So you might say, 'Why do you end up making theatre in a world in whic...” — Simon McBurney Quote

“So you might say, 'Why do you end up making theatre in a world in which there is already too much of that? Creating layer upon layer of artifice?' Perhaps the function is to pierce through that cloud and show reality - so the function of art is to make things - to show: 'Hang on, this is real.'”

“The very beautiful and very touching thing about opera singers is they are very willing to do whatever you want. Unlike actors, who constantly want to know why they're doing something, opera singers will sort of follow you into the fires of hell.”

“And the podcasting - I swear to you - on its worst day, the podcasts are better than our best films. Because they're more imaginative, and there's no artifice, and it's far more real.”

“Nothing has been left undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art and artifice, every cruelty and outrage has been practiced and perpetrated to destroy the rights of man. In this great struggle, every crime has been rewarded and every virtue has been punished.”

“That sense of a life in natural objects, which in most poetry is but a rhetorical artifice, was, then, in Wordsworth the assertion of what was for him almost literal fact.”