The film director, in many instances, has to swallow somebody else's decision about the final form of something. It's so hard as to be intolerable.

I would be terribly disappointed if anything would get in the way of my being cast in something, or if performances were canceled. It was a fix that I obviously needed.

I tend to arrive in the rehearsal process with very strongly developed ideas about what I want to do. But I don't like those ideas to be things that are not subject to change, or subject to development, or subject to challenge.

The first big break was winning a scholarship to go to Cambridge University. I was very lucky, because my parents couldn't have afforded a university education for me. Without a scholarship I couldn't possibly have gone.

In my early years, my father was away as a soldier in the war. When he came back, work was very difficult to come by. Even though he was a highly skilled man, a maker of furniture, the payment for that work was very poor.

The thing that I had saved up for myself and wanted most to bring off was a fully fledged professional production of Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford.

You are faced with the choice: either my integrity remains intact and this is the work that ends up on the screen, or I have to leave, and I have to be known to have left.

When I was at Stratford, the very first thing that I was commissioned to work on was trying to make a musical out of the documentary material about the General Strike, which was the next big historical event in England, after the First World War.

I've never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera.

I've experienced a private doubt, something that I've kept deeply inside, and then eventually delivered a piece of work that people responded to with huge enthusiasm.

I had a feeling about Shakespeare's soliloquies, that there should be a real exchange between the actor and the audience.

In a way, I have to have a dictatorship. I can't be told that I'm wrong. That conflicts with what I was saying earlier about listening. It isn't to do with receiving criticism and responding to other views, it's who has that last decision.

When I was 13 years old, a professional theater company in my town needed a kid actor. I auditioned, and I got the part, so for just a few weeks I became a member of the company and I met some professional actors.

If you can't fully believe in your ideas, it very quickly communicates to a group of actors who need something to hold onto. They need to believe that whatever criticism, whatever comment is received, is meant.

If you're a director, your entire livelihood and your entire creativity is based on your self-confidence. Sometimes that's dangerously close to arrogance.

I always believe it's better to have 30 imaginations working on a project, rather than one imagination telling the other 29 what to do.

One fine day I discovered that more complex plays really have to be directed.

So, through all that early professional career I would occasionally do a musical, a pantomime or a play with songs. The next stop would be a Shakespeare, or an Ibsen, or a play by a brand new writer who had never done anything in the theater before.

If you feel very deeply about something, it's not possible to sacrifice your integrity about that.

The film director, in many instances, has to swallow somebody else's decision about the final form of something. It's so hard as to be intolerable.

Peter Hall was just organizing the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was going to be an ensemble, it was going to be in repertory, it was going to have a home in London as well as in the Midlands, and all of those things were happening at that time.

I've just taken the decision that I'm going to now go full time back into the theater.

In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar.

A lot of performing instincts are involved in the business of direction, but so is analysis and having a sense of literature.

What you're doing is putting into professional play the way that you relate to other people, the way that you analyze and relate to a written text, the way that you would persuade anybody to do anything. It has to do with listening, with humility and a sense of yourself.

In the commercial theater, I've been pretty fortunate. The producers that I've worked with have allowed me to define the artistic integrity, the artistic limits of the work.

I so wanted to perform, and I grasped every opportunity.

There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.

Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want.

Boldness and decision command, often even in evil, the respect and concurrence of mankind.

The two important things I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavor is taking the first step, making the first decision.

In the coming days, I know there will be some reflecting on my time as mayor. Many of you will search to find what's behind my decision. It's simple. I have always believed that every person, especially public officials, must understand when it is time to move on. For me, that time is now.

For me, romance isn't an over-the-top act. It's someone offering to help and to support me. Or if that person thinks I'm making the wrong decision, he'll tell me. I want him to be honest, because being that honest takes a lot of guts.

Networks decide who will have a chance to do shows, but it is the viewers who make the final decision of who stays and who goes. I am very fortunate, in that the television viewers of our country have decided that Bob Barker can stay.

Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every part of your life in an instant.

Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.

The promise of equal educational opportunity envisioned by the Brown decision remains unfulfilled.

With respect to the FBI, they had problems communicating in a vertical way, within the FBI itself, so that information of importance could get pushed up to those who were decision-makers.

You can see my decision as either a distinctive factor or as a limitation. I don't feel it is a limitation.

The decision to go to war is the most important decision that I can make as a representative in Congress. As a veteran, I see any potential military action first through the eyes of the young men and women who volunteered to wear the uniform and would carry out such a mission.

She made the decision that her existence had lost its meaning. And you cannot judge that.

The decision to open up Bahrain to embrace all people indiscriminately was fostered in me ever since I was a child.

I made the decision to come back to New York, quit my job and move to Paris.

While Mayor Daley surprised me today with his decision to not run for reelection, I have never been surprised by his leadership, dedication and tireless work on behalf of the city and the people of Chicago.

This constitution recognises the need for social dialogue involving labour and management; it involves trade unions in the decision-making process; it has a social vision founded on social dialogue.

I think a benefit is that we try to put it up in a short time. From the decision to do this mission until we fly, it's six months and one week or so, so it's a very short time.

You get a lawyer whether you're in a military tribunal or whether you're in a federal court, number one. The attorney general decided that the court with the biggest - with the greatest venue, with the best jurisdiction was the New York court. That was the right decision to make.

Life came in and put me in front of the camera before I could really make a decision, but I think I probably would have gravitated to film.

Difficult times require difficult decisions. But supporting this bill shouldn't be a difficult decision.