In art as in life, some things need no translation.

Art is the writer not having control, but the subject having control of the writer.

Theater is perhaps one of the few places left where we are in a dialogue right now. Everything has become so partisan, and the rhetoric has become so heated, that conversation is almost impossible.

Playwriting isn't a calling so much as it is a hazing process.

grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.

The word is my weapon. FIRE!

In our time, the symbol of state intrusion into the private life is the mandatory urine test.

Without prayer it is impossible to resist temptations and to keep the commandments.

The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks.

There is no fundamental social change by being simply of individual and interpersonal actions. You have to have organizations and institutions that make a fundamental difference.

I would argue that coffee has been far more important to literature than alcohol.

I've always done things the hard way. I was born like a piece of tangled yarn. The job is trying to untangle it, and I'll probably go on doing it for the rest of my life.

If your heart is beautiful, your face will be beautiful, your life will be beautiful, everything will be beautiful.

I always wanted to write fiction. Always. As far back as I can remember it's been integral to my sense of myself - everything else was always a displacement activity.