The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deli….

When I used to teach writing, what I would tell my playwriting students is that while you're writing your plays, you're also writing the playwright. ….

One has to have a complicated kind of optimism. You can't refuse to look at how horrible things are..

Love is the world's infinite mutability; lies, hatred, murder even, are all knit up in it; it is the inevitable blossoming of its opposites, a magnif….

Artists know that diligence counts as much, if not more, as inspiration; in art, as in politics, patience counts as much as revolution..

There's a kind of a fundamental irresponsibility in playwriting, and the strength of playwriting comes from that irresponsibility..

Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions..

I hate America. I hate this country. It’s just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you. The white cracker who wrote the nationa….

People are more easily manipulated when they don't have information. If you ensure that kids grow up without basic reading skills, math skills, and s….

One wants to move through life with elegance and grace, blossoming infrequently but with exquisite taste, and perfect timing, like a rare bloom, a ze….

It's the fear of what comes after the doing that makes the doing hard to do..

I feel there's a power in theatre, but it's an indirect power. It's like the relationship of the sleeper to the unconscious. You discover things you ….

As a playwright, you are a torturer of actors and of the audience as well. You inflict things on people..

The work of artists is to find what's humanly possible - possibility's furthest reaches..

People shouldn't trust artists and they shouldn't trust art. Part of the fun of art is that it invites you to interpret it..

Don't be afraid; people are so afraid; don't be afraid to live in the raw wind, naked, alone...Learn at least this: What you are capable of. Let noth….

If you're gay and you can't hold hands, or you're black and you can't catch a taxi, or you're a woman and you can't go into the park, you are aware t….

Torture yourself about your failures. And then get back to work..

The smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one; one is a fiction. From such nets of souls societies, the social world, human life springs..

You'll find, my friend, that what you love will take you places you never dreamed you'd go..

It isn't easy, it doesn't count if it's easy, it's the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet..