Paulus Quotes & Sayings

I had to drop a boulder to wake people up about the A.R.T. We've done that, and now we have audiences again who want cutting-edge work, who want to be challenged, but who also won't be falling asleep at the theater. — Diane Paulus

Without butterflies, the world would soon have few flowers. There is enough room in the sky for all flyers. — Trina Paulus

The mediocre spouse tells. The good spouse explains. The superior spouse demonstrates. The great spouse encourages. — GE Paulus

It's freeing to not be caught up in your own personal baggage. — Diane Paulus

Look at where I lived! Four blocks from Lincoln Center. I used to play in the fountain. And then I started taking dance lessons. I was in 'The Nutcracker' for the N.Y. City Ballet when I was 8 and dancing in 'The Firebird' for George Balanchine when I was 9. Believe me, that's something you don't ever forget. — Diane Paulus

In the end, we must remember that no one can become what they need to be by remaining where the are. Until there is motion nothing can change. — GE Paulus

I think in our culture there's been a tendency for people to blame the audience. There is a tendency in our industry to say, 'The audience has left the building. People don't want culture anymore.' — Diane Paulus

I feel blessed to have had such a background, where animals, food raising, harvesting and canning were a natural part of life. — Trina Paulus

The musical theater is a glorious and distinctly American innovation in the history of theater. — Diane Paulus

Music is rhythm, and all theater is rhythm. It's about tempo and change and pulse, whether you're doing a verse play by Shakespeare or a musical. — Diane Paulus

I'm sorry, but to ask an audience these days to invest three hours in a show requires your heroine be an understandable and fully rounded character. — Diane Paulus

Creativity and the world of the imagination - the beauty of what we see as a child and the kind of play that we experience as a child - can be a way for us to survive tough times. — Diane Paulus

My music is tonally based. There is plenty of dissonance, but it's used as a contrast. There is polytonality at times and a lot of rhythmic interplay. — Stephen Paulus

As a director, I never feel that I have the answers. — Diane Paulus

Visits to 'the country' were very important to me growing up, especially working on the farm, experiencing all the wonders of cats and chickens and pigs and calves and outhouses! — Trina Paulus

The legal principle placing the burden of proof on accusers rather than the accused can be traced back to Second and Third Century Roman jurist, Julius Paulus Prudentissimus. Yet, this ancient concept, which forms the legal and moral cornerstone of the American judicial system, is quickly being undermined in the name of 'national security.' — Bob Barr

Since we're neither at the bottom nor at the top, we must be in the middle. — Trina Paulus

When you're a freelance director, you are hired to create the art, and it kind of stops there. — Diane Paulus

In Elizabethan England or classical Athens ... theater was at the center of, not culture, but society and politics and religion and civic engagement. Those things have a different audience. — Diane Paulus

We were a religious, practicing, Catholic family - Mass together on Sunday, Catholic schools, and parents who practiced everything they preached. A great gift was their total absence of any derogatory talk about people of any race or culture and we were on a street of many faiths, though no other races at that early time. — Trina Paulus

I am always looking for what piece, what artists, what playwrights, what directors, what subject matter is going to catalyze an audience. — Diane Paulus

I'm always interested in working with people who are good team players - that are selfless that way in their interests and dedication to the project. — Diane Paulus

Theatre and opera were always the twin kingdoms that I felt I had to conquer, because they were my parents' favorites. — Diane Paulus

I listen to music, I read scripts, and I know pretty intuitively if I can unlock it in a way. It's actually very liberating when you understand that not everything is for you. — Diane Paulus

I knew ART was was going to give me this opportunity to expand my role as a director and finally let me have a seat at the table where I could get involved in these policy discussions and producing discussions and, frankly, the financial discussions. — Diane Paulus

Opera is the ultimate art form. It has singing and music and drama and dance and emotion and story. — Diane Paulus

I think every theater in America wants a younger audience ... and you can't just hope to have a younger audience, you have to program things that audience is going to connect with. — Diane Paulus

Surrender is forbidden. Sixth Army will hold their positions to the last man and the last round and by their heroic endurance will make an unforgettable contribution toward the establishment of a defensive front and the salvation of the Western world. — Friedrich Paulus

I live in the in between. Between what if and what is. — Rajdeep Paulus

Yellow decided to risk for a butterfly.
For courage she hung right beside the other cocoon and began to spin her own.
'Imagine, I didn't even know I could do this. That's some encouragement that i'mon the right track. If I have the stuff inside me to make cocoons - maybe the stuff of butterflies is there too. — Trina Paulus

Mankind has not changed in 10,000 years. — GE Paulus

Stripe felt frozen. To be so high and not high at all!
It only looked good from the bottom. — Trina Paulus

We don't think of ourselves as 'unforgiving' or 'bitter'- those words imply that we are somehow personally responsible. We prefer to talk about how deeply we have been 'hurt', implying that we are merely helpless victims. Are those who have been deeply wounded destined to live damaged lives? Or is there real healing for deep hurt? I say there is ... We've also deceived ourselves into believing that we can love and serve God and be 'good Christians,' while failing to forgive. When are we going to get honest? — Byron Paulus

The only remedy for love is to love unconditionally. — GE Paulus

If one wishes to be a great project manager, one needs to talk less and write more. — GE Paulus

Art cannot be looked at as an elite, sacred event anymore. It has to be embraced as an accessible, popular form, which is what I believe theater is at its roots. — Diane Paulus

"Tell me, sir, what is a butterfly?"
"It's what you are meant to become. It flies with beautiful wings and joins the earth to heaven. It drinks only nectar from the flowers and carries the seeds of love from one flower to another. Without butterflies, the world would soon have few flowers. — Trina Paulus

Being a director, whether you're in rehearsal or you're in auditions or you're in a creative meeting, is so much to me about being present in the moment. There's a sense of time stopping. — Diane Paulus

Politics, to a degree, is about legislation, administration. You can't be there in the trenches. — Diane Paulus

Any opera is interesting if the characters are worth seeing. — Stephen Paulus

For me, the reason why people go to a mountaintop or go to the edge of the ocean is to look at something larger than themselves. That feeling of awe, of going to a cathedral, it's all about feeling lost in something bigger than oneself. To me, that's the definition of spectacle. — Diane Paulus

I'm always interested in looking - historically - at how theater can animate history and how all of that can make us engage with our lives in an enriching way. — Diane Paulus

EYou reveal your character by what you do with what you have. — GE Paulus

I don't want to be in an art bubble. — Diane Paulus

Humans have a propensity to oppose things when it is not their idea and they had no input, or simply because it was initiated by those whom they dislike. — GE Paulus

I've gotten to the point that I don't even know what tomorrow brings. When I'm teaching, obviously I'm in town for the class every week. — Diane Paulus

I had this epiphany that I like the interaction with people. I wanted to make things happen at a grassroots level. — Diane Paulus

I want an audience that will come sitting forward in their seats. — Diane Paulus

It takes lot of butterflies to make a world full of flowers — Trina Paulus

I love and honour [Paulus Aemilius, in Plutarch's Lives], for his fondness for his children, which instead of blushing at, he avows and glories in: and that at an age, when almost all the heros and great men thought that to make their children and family a secondary concern, was the first proof of their superiority and greatness of soul. — Fanny Burney

I think actually what keeps the intensity manageable - it's a little counterintuitive - is that it's changing all the time. Every week is different for me. — Diane Paulus

We can fly!
"We can become butterflies!
"There's nothing at the top
and it doesn't matter!"
As he heard his own
message he realized how
he had misread the instinct
to get high.
To get to the "top" he
must fly, not climb. — Trina Paulus

There are two types of people on earth: givers and takers. Life is not about taking and having but about giving and living. — GE Paulus

At the core of what I'm doing is a belief in the audience, a belief that populism doesn't mean dumbing down theater, but rather giving the audience a voice and a role in experiencing theater. — Diane Paulus

I grew up with a beautiful gold harp sitting in our living room. My older sister played it. — Diane Paulus

How does one become a butterfly? They have to want to learn to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar. — Trina Paulus

I give so much of myself to my work; I want to be with people who are going to be there with me. — Diane Paulus

The mission of the A.R.T. is to expand the boundaries of theater through works of the canon and the new works of tomorrow. — Diane Paulus

We have a nice home and we love each other and that's enough. — Trina Paulus

Later bad things will be said about Stalin; he'll be called a tyrant and his reign of terror will be denounced. But for the people of Eduard's generation he will remain the supreme leader of the people of the Union at the most tragic moment in their history; the man who defeated the Nazis and proved himself capable of a sacrifice worthy of the ancient Romans: the Germans had captured his son, Lieutenant Yakov Dzhugashvili, while the Russians had captured Field Marshal Paulus, one of the top military leaders of the Reich, at Stalingrad. When the German High Command proposed an exchange, Stalin responded with disdain that he didn't exchange field marshals for simple lieutenants. Yakov committed suicide by throwing himself on the electrified barbed wire fence of his prison camp. * — Emmanuel Carrere

If Paulus's army had capitulated before the end, the Russians would have had the advantage of withdrawing forces against Paulus and against the southern front, where I had only two Romanian armies. Therefore, the resistance of the Sixth German Army, even to the death of the last man, was necessary. — Erich Von Manstein

Creativity is a form of knowledge. — Diane Paulus

You have to think about why you're asking an audience to come to the theater. It's not that they should come because it's good for them, because it's the vegetables that they should eat and the culture shot that they should get ... It's about experience and building community and catalyzing dialogue and bringing people together. — Diane Paulus

We're a depraved civilization. All this technology, all the computer games and the iPhones ... nobody will sit for art anymore. What a dismaying state of humanity. — Diane Paulus

Army requests immediate permission to surrender in order to save lives of remaining troops. — Friedrich Paulus

I really challenge every actor at the beginning of a process, and I always say, 'I have an idea that I'm going to bring to the table. I hope and expect that you will have an idea and bring it to the table. But the way I really want to work is that together we're going to have a third idea that is better than either of our ideas.' — Diane Paulus

The idea of making audiences feel like they matter, that the theatre matters, and that they're a partner in the event - that's what fuels me as a director ... I believe it's actually radical to think about the audience. — Diane Paulus

My generation of director has no illusions that we are going to be fed and cared for by subsidized theater in America. — Diane Paulus