The thing about being an outsider… is that it teaches you to hear what people are thinking because you’re constantly looking for the people who just don’t give a damn. – Mike Nichols
I’m in the theater because of two plays: ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘Death of a Salesman.’ – Mike Nichols
Here’s the most mysterious thing to me. I look back at those first plays I did and the first movies I did, and I only have one question, which is, ‘What was I so confident about? Where did I get that? – Mike Nichols
I keep coming back to it, over and over – adultery and cheating. It’s the most interesting problem in the theater. How else do you get Oedipus? That’s the first cheating in the theater. – Mike Nichols
Improvisation has to do with exploring something like two brothers in a room together. You find out things about situations by discovering the things that they aren’t saying. It’s a way to explore scenes. Sometimes it’s more useful than others, but it’s always there to see if there’s anything that you might improve. – Mike Nichols
I think the main thing about comedy and humor is that it’s impossible and always was impossible to define. – Mike Nichols
As a director, my job is, and always has been, divided into a number of things: dealing with the crew, the money and the studio, and the marketing and publicity. These are all different jobs that have to be learned and done as well as possible. The celebrity part rarely touches a director. – Mike Nichols
I think a director can make a play happen before your eyes so that you are part of it and it is part of you. If you can get it right, there’s no mystery. It’s not about mystery. It’s not even mysterious. It’s about our lives. – Mike Nichols
Very often when a story really holds us, it gets pushed away because it’s too close for comfort. – Mike Nichols
Oh my God, if I know anything, I know I’m gonna die! I never forget that. I know I’ll be forgotten in a minute, and that’s just fine with me. – Mike Nichols
I never understand when people say, ‘Do you do comedy or tragedy?’ I don’t think they’re very much different. They both have to be true, and there isn’t a great play in the world that doesn’t have funny parts to it – as ‘Salesman’ does, as ‘King Lear’ does. The whole idea is to reflect life in some way, which means surely you have to have both. – Mike Nichols
In a weird way, when I was looking back, I didn’t know I was going to be a director until I was. – Mike Nichols
The producers want us to sell, sell, sell. That’s my little joke. That’s what we do by day; by night, we’re artists. – Mike Nichols
That seems to me the great American danger we’re all in, that we’ll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it. – Mike Nichols
I am drawn to the mystery of marriage. You can never know what the contract is between two people, and that is a very strong subject. I think it may be my subject. – Mike Nichols
There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love. – Mike Nichols
