Robert Lepage Quotes

I don't like the word 'poetry,' and I don't like poetry readings, and I usually don't like poets. I would much prefer describing myself and what I do as: I'm kind of a curator, and I'm kind of a night-owl reporter.

Ideally, I'd like to write poetry for public performances and prose for a different, more contemplative kind of consumption.

Poetry has, in a way, been my bridge to my acting career.

I tell my workshop students, 'I want you to think of yourselves as artists. Then, when you're writing, you're painting, you're crafting, you're making a design, you're sculpting, you're creating choreography, sound, a sound script.'

I'm a poet first and foremost, before the modelling.

My job is essentially that of an entertainer, no different to that of a musician, no different to that of an actor. I just happen to be an author.

What you compose with is neither here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or you compose with events; the Sheriff's officer, or whatever.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.

Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person.

When I look at the arc of my career, my focus is on lyricism, right? I own that.

I want to photograph what I see and put it in a dramatic context. I'm an actor and a writer, and I want to tell these stories and present these shapes, colors and movements as I see them, as I see them serve a narrative. As I see that narrative serve an audience. That's what I want to do.

When I sit down to write, I consider myself an artist.

To be honest, I don't think I'm an actor. I'm a creator - or try to be.

My favourite genre lies inside myself, and as I follow my favourite stories, characters and images, it sums up to a certain genre. So at times even I have to try to guess which genre a film will be after I've made it.

Poetry is almost like my foundation for everything. I almost feel I am a better actor and writer because of it.

I was an English major in college, so I really liked spoken word and poetry; it was what I did before I wrote music.

I've always considered myself a poet in everything that I do, whether it's photography or movie-making.

Storytelling is really at the root of everything that I do.

I was never interested in acting on film or in television, but I was always more inclined to writing and directing, and the exploration of character.

I consider myself more of a writer than I do a director.

I've always been a writer. I've always done writing or spoken-word, hip-hop stuff with my friends.

To me, writing is a matter of voice. I think like that. The expression I sometimes use to myself is 'actual song.' That what I do is somewhere on the line between speaking to you as I am now and actual song. And the things I love when I say one of those poems to myself - it's a little bit like singing, it's a little bit like speaking.

I was writing poetry, and the Mountain Goats was an outgrowth of that.

I'm more interested in writing than in performing.