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.

I admire people who can spend every aspect of their life in one discipline and really go all the way. I feel the only way I could achieve some type of excellence is if I connect to other people, other disciplines.

We have a tendency in Quebec - and I include myself in this - to describe ourselves using the past. We're always nostalgic.

I'm trying to tell history with a capital H through histories with a small h. It moves people, because you know in your own personal relationships, your own story, there's an echo to a much larger reality.

Why is it that I can remember so easily the lyrics to the opening theme song of 'Gilligan's Island?' Why do I remember these trivial things, and I can't remember the names of important collaborators?

The real writing of a piece comes only when you are performing it. It is why I like theatre. In film and TV, the image is locked forever, but in theatre, there is constant change; each performance is part of the writing process.

Reading fairytales to children expands their imaginations.

Cirque du Soleil distinguished itself by being a circus with no animals. Before then, circus was partly about showing how man can tame other species.

With the social media phenomenon, where people's opinions inform so much of what we do with our lives, where the number of 'likes' decides what we should program, I cringe.

I can't really define myself as a dramatist or as an actor or as someone who is interested in music.

In everything I've done, I've always tried to make room for indigenous people, to include them.

When we work on a new theatre piece, we improvise a lot. But it's the opposite in opera, where everything is fixed.

There is a way to grow old and still have dignity.

Everybody loves Vegas, and everybody puts it down, especially intellectuals and artists. We have to rub our feet on it, but we're all secretly thrilled to be there.

I haven't become a satanist, but I am fascinated by the character of the devil.

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

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.

'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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Theatre comes alive when someone cross-dresses onstage.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.