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The sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic.

I learned a lot about critics, not to really take them too seriously about movies.

I came up in the theater, and I learned pretty quickly that reading a review, whether it's good or bad, can strangely affect the next performances, because you're reacting to something that's been said about you. So I tend to avoid that stuff pretty studiously.

I know that I am my worst critic. I know that if I can walk away from the set at the end of the day and feel that I did the best job I could and feel proud, that's what will satisfy me.

Theater is so precious about each word - not that it's a bad thing, but you definitely never stray from the script.

I understood that I was not the best director in the world nor the worst director in the world. I realized that there is a very mysterious element to what works and what doesn't work in the theater. And it's good to know that from the beginning.

What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism.

Any one who chooses will set up for a literary critic, though he cannot tell us where he went to school, or how much time was spent in his education, and knows nothing about letters at all.