“Directing teenage actors is like juggling jars of nitro-glycerine: exhilarating and dangerous.”

“Teenage boys, goaded by their surging hormones run in packs like the primal horde. They have only a brief season of exhilarating liberty between control by their mothers and control by their wives.”

“There's something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls.”

“What reading does...is keep alive the dangerous and exhilarating idea that life is not sequenced of lived moments, but a destiny.”

“Allowed to cast themselves for great tragic roles, they were experiencing the exhilaration felt by great tragic actors. It was not lack of control, lack of taste, lack of knowledge that accounted for permission of what was not permitted in the West. Rather was it the reverse. Our people could not have handled patients full of the dangerous thoughts of death and love; these people had such resources that they did not need to empty their patients of such freight.”

“When I was a kid, I wanted to be as good an actor as Patrick, as cool as Frakes, and as funny as Brent. From time to time, one of them would say something to me that made me feel like I'd taken a step in that direction, and it always meant the world to me. I loved it when Brent would joke around with me, because it made me feel like I was the peer I so desperately wanted to be, instead of the clueless teenager I knew I was.”