No one wants the truth if it is inconvenient.

I think the job of the artist is to remind people of what they have chosen to forget.

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!

I speak my own sins; I cannot judge another. I have no tongue for it.

Well, all the plays that I was trying to write were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion which you could observe and walk away from.

The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment.

An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.

Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.

It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.

Okay, well, if motion is the constant, how can I remain in motion?

Blues was my first love. It was the first thing where I said, 'Oh man, this is the stuff.' It just sounded so raw and honest, gut-bucket honest. From then I started rebelling.

When his first-born was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once were - large, brilliant, and black.

It would be hard to find a more influential book of Biblical studies than his Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic [1973].

Onstage I've been hit by a grapefruit, beercans, eggs, spit, money, cigarette butts, Mandies, Quaaludes, joints, bras, panties, and a fist.

It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You'd wake up in a concert and think, Wow, how did I get here?

Fate is the opportunity. Choice is what you do with it.

I love San Francisco. It would be a perfect place for a honeymoon.