Richard Eyre

“We can alleviate physical pain, but mental pain - grief, despair, depression, dementia - is less accessible to treatment. It's connected to who we are - our personality, our character, our s...”

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

“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...”

“I think the collision between the First and Third world is going to become more and more conspicuous. It's the big cliff that we've all got to climb.”

“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.”

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

“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 he...”

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

“I have a worm's eye view and a bird's eye view simultaneously and it's immensely helpful to understand what is happening on the shop floor when you are harnessing many talents and telling an...”

“I'm inclined to think that, because it's such an awful life, that politicians do go into it for the best reasons. I mean, some may love the sound of their own voice. But it's such a wearying...”

“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...”

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

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

“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......”

“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.”

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

“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...”

“Governments have always been wary of the arts because they're wayward and ambiguous and because they deal with feelings rather than facts.”

“I'm never comfortable at theatre opening nights. If it's my own production I'm too wound up to be able to enjoy the performance and too wary to enjoy the event as a social occasion.”

“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.”