Richard Eyre Quotes

Don't ever be afraid to ask any question.

Every action has a consequence, so always try to be good.

There are those who leave without our needing to detain them; we have said all there is to say.

Balance is the enemy of art.

'Mary Poppins,' the movie, was an object of mockery if you were a student in the '60s, something to be laughed at.

Everything people say about grandparenthood is true - it is pleasure without responsibility. It is unquestioned love.

I resent all organised religions.

This sense of entitlement contributes mightily to sloppiness, to low incentive, to boredom, to bad choices, to instant gratification, to constant demands for more, and to all kinds of addictions (including the addiction to technology).

What we hold in our heads - our memory, our feelings, our thoughts, our sense of our own history - is the sum of our humanity.

I sort of feel that climate change will be solved by science. I just feel instinctively that we will find a way of saving ourselves. But I am less confident that we won't destroy ourselves in other ways.

I've always argued, unsuccessfully, that there's no point in giving money to the arts unless you educate people in them.

All good actors are very bright. You can't be stupid and a good actor. You may be inarticulate, you may not be highly educated, but all good actors are quick-witted, some of them dazzlingly so. All you do is guide them.

The desire to share is not a vague, windy sentiment, not when you see the massive rise in live concerts in response to the phenomenon of downloading music ... People want to get rid of the headphones and be part of a shared experience.

I am interested in the gap between what people say and what they think - the undiscovered world of people's lives. Lives of quiet desperation.

I'm wary of artistic directors who say, 'Here is my vision', because it's empirical. Basically it's about who you work with and what plays you put on; the vision comes out of that.

Entitlement is a double- edged sword (or a double-jawed trap) for kids. On one edge it gives kids all that they don't need - indulgence, dullness, conceit, and laziness; and on the backswing, it takes from them everything they do need - motivation, inde- pendence, inventiveness, pride, responsibility, and a chance to really work for things and to build their own sense of fulfill- ment and self-esteem.

I was a chronically shy child. That kernel of my younger self is still there, but I've developed mechanisms to deal with it.

You can't be minimalist as a director until you have acquired the experience and confidence to say no.

I envy the happiness of others ... I envy the sense of belonging ... I seem always to be remaking myself.

There is in our society a gulf opening up, a kind of cultural apartheid, between those who are brought up to feel our national culture is theirs, to take ownership of it, and enjoy the privileges of that, and those who are completely disfranchised, those - for example - who will never be taken to the theatre to see Shakespeare.

Maybe we slip so easily into blaming our parents - you're perpetually a child and they're perpetually a parent and you long to balance the equation, but it can only be balanced posthumously.

The principle of acting in good faith is at the heart of decent work.

If the arts are held up solely as a means of social insight, fantasy is denied the chance to be commonplace and reality the chance to be exotic.

Naming a baby is an act of poetry, for many people the only creative moment of their lives.

I can't think of anyone I admire who isn't fuelled by self-doubt. It's an essential ingredient. It's the grit in the oyster.

I'm the classic example of alienation: I grew up in a middle-class household without art or books. I was going to be a chemical engineer until I went to the theatre for the first time at 16 and was blown away by it.

A place makes a deep impression on you when you're young. It lives with you. It's like your childhood. It fertilises the imagination.

Theatre is castigated for wallowing in self-indulgence, but it's curiously unsentimental. You simply have to move on. Everything passes. Something in me likes that.

I've always believed that you write to discover what you think. On most subjects, if I'm asked what do I think about them, I'd say I don't know, I'll have to write them down.

I believe there is a relationship between having an interest in the arts and the behaviour of society as a whole. Some politicians find it difficult that the arts is a weapon of happiness ... Politics is often about deprivation rather than the opening up of ideas and nourishing creative endeavour.

Waiters are like actors waiting in the wings, bantering whenever we passed each other on the restaurant floor, shouting at each other backstage in the kitchen and winking and corpsing above the heads of our audience, the unsuspecting customers.