Peter Brook Quotes

I think critics are very useful. But I think that they, in a way, betray their position when they stop people looking for themselves.

I learned my lesson early in my career that it's not helpful to go and look at what other people's opinions are.

It's more instructive to learn what you don't like than just to like everything.

Although I'm a very emotional man, I just can't have blind faith; I have to find out for myself.

I love songs that are very autobiographical.

'What am I missing?' is a much more important question than 'How cool am I?'

I'm not going to lie, there are more interesting ways to spend your time than answering questions about yourself. But if there were no questions to ask me, I might have a beef with that.

What we want in students is creativity and a willingness to fail. I always say to students, 'If you've never at some point stayed up all night talking to your new boyfriend about the meaning of life instead of preparing for the test, then you're not really an intellectual.'

The greatest gift is not being afraid to question.

Look at the evidence and to be willing to question your own truths, and to be willing to scrutinize things that you hold dearly because that way, that transparency, that self-awareness, will protect you from ever becoming somebody that whose beliefs somehow make them have myopic vision about what could be.

There is no such thing as an unreasonable question, or a silly question, or a frivolous question, or a waste-of-time question. It's your life, and you've got to get these answers.

We write about ourselves because we know about ourselves.

Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.

I think it's nearly impossible to write something fictional without having it be about yourself in some way or another.

I think anything that anyone writes that's any good is going to have a lot of autobiography.

Everything I know, I write about. My only research is what I did.

I never reflect or convey that which I have not experienced myself.

Every writer, to some extent, writes about himself.

I know that we shall meet problems along the way, but I'd far rather see for myself what's going on in the world outside, than rely on newspapers, television, politicians and religious leaders to tell me what I should be thinking.

I don't consciously use my own life or experience at all.

All my songs come from me because I only seem able to write about myself and my experiences.

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

Anywhere you go in the world is what you make of it, not what you read in books.

There's no biography so interesting as the one in which the biographer is present.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.