The first 'Ring' in Bayreuth was about the poetical world, the mythological world.

The safety prospects in 'Ka' are the highest in the world.

If you decide to work with the opera world, chances are there are going to be people who resist that.

My father had barely any education. He could hardly write or count. But his great pride was that he was perfectly bilingual. In the household, he entertained this idea that we had to speak both languages.

I always thought I was more of a mommy's boy, because she was charming, talkative, a great storyteller. But as I dug back into my past, I realized I am exactly like my father on so many levels, although I never thought I inherited anything from him.

As a kid, my dad moved us to the upper town, which was in a higher class of people, and we would see the lower town below. Every day, we could see where we came from and where we were now.

When I went into the conservatory at 17, then I was able to open up and accept everything about myself and show my feminine side as well as my masculine.

I never questioned if I was effeminate or not. That didn't matter in the theatre.

I never went through a gender identity problem, but I did with my sexuality.

There's not a system better than another. There are some people better than others. I'm not anti-democracy, but there's no real system yet that has proven itself to be the right one.

The extraordinary context of 'Coriolanus' is that it's the first republic - it's the first attempt to create a society not ruled by a monarch. It changes the whole system, and you see how the establishment reacts to that, how they have disdain but play along - and you recognize this is the whole American republican system.

The thing that's interesting about Trump is that when you read 'Coriolanus,' you'd be tempted to draw parallels. But I don't do that.

My naivety is to assume people will think there's compassion and solidarity in wanting to play someone even though we are not them.

A show is good when there is a meeting of time and space, when time and space become irrelevant.

Vegas is the city of temptation. I think, perhaps, it is an experiment by NASA. If we're going to send people to Mars, how will we create false economies and cultures to satisfy them? Vegas has the answer. People go there when they've nothing left to lose.

Theatre comes alive when someone cross-dresses onstage.

I like doing very small, intimate things in the morning and then, in the afternoon, to be working on something in a big stadium.

In real life, I am not a lonely person; I have lots of good friends and am active socially. But there are certain aspects of my life when I have felt very alone, utterly alone, and one of them is when I am performing on my own.

When we were working on 'River Ota' in the '90s, I learnt to read Japanese, which was how I discovered that it incorporates elements of Chinese calligraphy.

I'm a follower of people not necessarily connected with the theater.

When I directed the 'Ring' cycle at the Metropolitan Opera in New York recently, there were people texting all through the show. But theatre isn't a communication device: it's a communion.

'The Blue Dragon' uses very filmic language and involves a lot of technology. It is more cinematic than theatrical and was inspired by comic strips and graphic novels.

I wouldn't be happy to be a specialist. There are some very interesting artists in history who refused to be nailed down into a category, like Da Vinci or Jean Cocteau. You could say Cocteau was a great poet but also a film-maker, interested in theatre, sculpture, and could never identify with any of these forms exclusively.

Technology can become a crutch. Sometimes it's there just to hide behind when you're shy of what you're trying to say.