I dont see a lot of movies that portray the East Village as well as I think they can.

One of the tricks to writing great plays is to get people in a room together and not let them leave. You want the tension to escalate. Keeping them there is the hardest part, so you have to take away any excuse for them to leave.

I think, for me, when I direct my own work it's just an extension of the authorship.

I think there is a complicated side effect to overcoming evil in that we are forever changed by it. I think after we ingest some of the cruelty of the world, it takes years off of our lives, but it also gives us wisdom and a little grace, hopefully a sense of compassion.

My work is always more emotional than I am. My characters say things to each other that I get accused of not being able to say to my girlfriend.

Man, that's the only kind of book I like – one that's so real you want to find out everything there is to know about the person who wrote it, like how tall he is and what kind of music he likes and whether or not he really went through all the stuff he was writing about.

When it's just a few scenes and a couple of actors behaving in a room, I feel very confident with that.