Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire.

That's where the theatre of dreams is, over in L.A.; it's the land of opportunity for actors, and to go over there with a good team behind you and have a part you want to audition for really makes it a joy.

The theatre is your pulpit - it is your church - and you want to be a priest in your church, and that's what I believe in.

Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

But men must know, that in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

There's no real theatre without taking risks.

Best performance of the year: Aston Villa v. Milan, September 1994

At last it was over, and the theatre rang and rang with the grateful applause of the released.

Every now and then, when you're on stage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It's a sound you can't get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you've hit them where they live.

Sometimes we go to a play and after the curtain has been up five minutes we have a sense of being able to settle back in the arms of the playwright. Instinctively we know that the playwright knows his business.

One begins with two people on a stage, and one of them had better say something pretty damn quick.

We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air: the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner.

I don't go to see sad plays. There are enough sad endings in life without buying a ticket to one.

My favorite stage performance is the show I'm in at the moment. It's like being in love - you can't remember being in love with anybody else.

If your job is to leaven ordinary lives with elevating spectacle, be elevating or be gone.

You can tell how bad a musical is by how many times the chorus yells, 'Hooray.'

The theater is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Its second name is compromise.

The New York audience, the night I went, gave the play a standing ovation. A cynical friend maintains that Broadway audiences always do this to justify to themselves the mountainous cost of the evening out.

In New York people don't go to the theatre - they go to see hits.

In the theatre, people want to be surprised - but by things they expect.