It's obvious that any new show comes with its share of blunders, misfires, and bad choices.

I will always demand the right for theatre to talk about anything and anyone. Without exception. None.

The same critics who destroyed 'Seven Streams' when we opened in Edinburgh - and yes, it was horrible - called it one of the most important shows of the 21st century six years later in London.

I need to have many things cooking at the same time.

I studied as an actor at the theatre conservatoire in Quebec, but by the time I got to my third year, I was more interested in directing. There's more to it than helping actors get round a stage: it's a wonderful way of telling stories.

Opera should be a place for art forms to meet. I've worked a lot with Peter Gabriel; his music isn't operatic, but he creates big, popular gatherings to which architecture, dance, and music are all invited.

Opera needs a major makeover; the large opera houses are too in thrall to their conservative patrons.

People think that it is negative, but in fact, chaos can be very fertile.

Often, particularly towards the end of the process, I think of myself less as a theatre director and more as someone who just directs the traffic. My job is to move the ideas and bits of the show into the places where they work best. Sometimes my job is also to say, 'No.'

Without meaning to sound crass, I've never had any psychological... help. It's because I feel my work is so revealing about who I am and what I am trying to understand about myself. It's a therapeutic process.

If you're going to do a show about somebody who dumped you, it's much richer if you have three characters dealing with different aspects of that theme. There is more space for people to identify with it.

I think theatre must be an event, an experience, not compete with cinema. When people are able to download stories on Netflix, you need to give them a good reason to jump into the car and drive two hours. It has to be something you can only see in the theatre, and it has to be worth it.

Theatre's still expensive compared to downloading on Netflix; that has to be addressed. It doesn't mean it has to be over-subsidised by the state, but it's something we're trying to figure out.

Artists always try to make something that is going to be relevant and up-to-the-minute.

I remember my first review in London said I was the next Peter Brook. I said: 'No way. I'm not Peter Brook. I don't have the maturity, the experience, the intelligence. Don't burden me.'

During the tour of 'Circulations,' we spent a lot of time in Canadian Chinatowns. I was fascinated by the idea that you can cross the road and enter this dream world, this vision of China.

I don't think there is any kind of magic about what I do. All of the connections are there, somewhere in the subconscious or in the collective unconscious. If I let the elements speak to each other, then these coincidences will happen. And they do happen. They happen all the time.

Of course I had friends, but it was very limiting because there was always a chance that at every corner, someone would be laughing at me or waiting to beat me up. I had a very lonely childhood because of that.

I am interested in suffering and, in particular, the Buddhist idea that in pain, you can find beauty.

Writing is very much perceived as something distinct from performance. I don't see it like that.

I find it very strange when people say that they are trying to solve 'Uncle Vanya' or find a solution for 'Henry V.' Plays aren't puzzles. They are about playing. But so much theatre has become about performing and acting rather than playing, which is a great pity because audiences are captivated by watching people play.

The great advantage of the circus, and the reason it is so popular, is really the ideal combination of art and sport. It's the ideal art form, in a certain way, if you want to be accessible.

I was interested in theatre, and the only experience that I had in high school was as an actor. But when I got in Conservatoire, my teachers would give me a lot of flack because I wasn't rehearsing my lines; I'd be doing stage management. I was interested in sound. I was interested in architecture. I was interested in every aspect of theatre.

I enjoy juggling four or five different projects in the air and finding connections and disconnections between them.

People talk about fantastic memories of childhood, but I remember children being cruel to me and wanting to come out of childhood as soon as possible because I knew adults were generally more contained in their cruelty.

The important thing is not to know where you are going, to be open to accidents. That's what keeps it fun.

Every time we make a new invention, we think we're going to save the world, but eventually, we understand that the real virtues of that new invention have mostly to do with commerce. Then we feel a huge emptiness, and we want to fill it with beauty.

If Darwin's theories are true, then we have within us the physical memory of when we were fish or apes.

Usually, on Broadway or in Hollywood, you come up with a project, and you have to convince the producers that it's safe.

When we did 'The Dragons' Trilogy,' China was a big, mysterious piece of rock that we never thought would even move. It was impenetrable, impossible to deal with.

I've always had a passion for geography. Even at a very young age.

In Grade 2, when we had to do a presentation in front of the class, I'd always do things about Ireland or Italy. I could draw maps; I could name all the capitals: I was completely drawn to other lands. I discovered with time that it's a thirst for other people, for otherness, for something fascinating and mysterious.

You're only as good as your last movie, period. It's a business.

Sylvie Guillem is the best dancer in the world.

We tend to forget that in those days before the Internet and HBO and Imax and 3-D cinema, opera was the thing. Opera and theatre. If you were a man of the world and you mingled among the happy few, you would be at the opera.

I was brought up by a father and mother who were radically different.

Why do we remember stuff from when we were 5 years old but not important facts that are more recent?

I want to be surprised by life... I think that's more interesting.

There's nothing sadder than when things happen the way you've planned them, because we don't have a lot of imagination, you know.

I don't disagree with the critics often, and I'm not destroyed by bad criticism anymore. There comes a point when you go beyond it.

All of Vegas is false. There's a false Paris, a false Venice, a false Baghdad - in fact, all of the early Vegas aesthetic is Baghdad, which is also the irony. It's 'Aladdin,' the sands, 'One Thousand and One Nights.'

We should never overestimate an audience's culture, but we should never underestimate their intelligence.

Nothing is worse than having your dreams come true.

A puppet, for example, is just a piece of wood, a couple of rivets, but put them together, and if you know how to do it, and the audience's imagination joins in with this, then a miracle will come out of that machine. That is what we and the audience do in the theatre - we create miracles in that space.

I've always been a little scared of technology, which is why I explore it.

Making art in big cities is often frustrating and difficult. It's why artists are drawn to smaller places.

I was a privileged observer to be there when Celine Dion opened at Caesars Palace and then the second Gulf War started. It was an odd thing to see the impact both events had on Vegas. The place was riding high after Celine, but overnight, once war was declared, it was deserted.

I never thought of my father when I was growing up. Truly. He was a strong, silent man who worked hard to support his family.

I had been warned by other directors that opera is hell. The singers don't want to do what you want.

Chaos is a good thing.