“I think taking the stage is one of the most unnatural things anyone can do. In a way, just walking on stage actually creates an altered state–it's not right, no one's meant to do that, unless you're a priest or a magician, or something like that. To put somebody who's very incapable in many ways in to that position creates a combustion reaction inside me. I know that, and I take the stage knowing that.”

Quoted in "Oh, girl : A Talk with Julie Taymor" at Subtitles to Cinema (2 September 2008) http://subtitlestocinema.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/oh-girl-a-talk-with-julie-taymor/
Context: The first thing I do when I’m creating, either for stage or for cinema, is to find the ideograph of the story. Which is; the one, simple expression that can tell everything. And at the same time be recognizable for the audience. It’s like in old Japanese paintings — if you were to paint a bamboo forest, you should be able to find its essence with only three strokes.

On her connection to the stage
Freeman interview (September 2012)

"The Man Who Would Be Queen" in Melody Maker (2 May 1981) http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Freddie_Mercury_-_05-02-1981_-_Melody_Maker.

An Interview with Dracula and his Brides (2004)

Dialogue between Heraclitus and Democritus. Compare: "All the world ’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players", William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act ii. Scene 7.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

"The Singularity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

Julie Barenson, Chapter 15, p. 163
2000s, The Guardian (2003)

O interview (2003)
Context: I had been already trying to do Frida, but I would sit on my sorrows because it was so difficult. But now I was learning new things. And so I thought, this is what I want to do. I want to do one movie that if I die the next day, I know I left one thing in this world that I was very proud of, that other people can see, that meant something to me, that had my voice. Because God forbid I die tomorrow, I'm the bombshell for the rest of my existence. … Then I became very angry I said, I have become what they decided I am. When did I fall in this trap? Somebody decided I was this, and I became that. And I said, "I'm going to change it now. I'm going to define myself."