Reading Mark Harris' book on Mike Nichols and can't recommend it enough. Feel like I'm tearing through it but I'm only up to “Carnal Knowledge.” Not just great anecdotes but great life advice throughout. This is when he was directing “The Apple Tree” on Broadway with Alan Alda and Barbara Harris:

As work got under way, Nichols, at first, felt very much back in his element, once again pushing his actors to stay true to life and engaged with one another. “He was an actor's director,” says Alda. “Once when Barbara and I were rehearsing, he said this thing that has aided me all my life. He didn't feel we were connecting to each other, and he said, 'You kids think relating is the icing on the cake. It's not. It's the cake.'”

I wish I'd had this book, or known this story, when I was young and wary of being smart; I might've studied harder.