Yeah, I have the detail-obsessed, controlling personality of a novelist, but I somehow ended up writing plays.

I feel with writing, so much of the time, I don't know how to tap in and be spontaneous and alive on a daily basis. So I don't write every day. I'm just not disciplined, and I can't be in the groove most of the time. I feel like I'm in the groove ten days a year or something. But with reading and research, I feel like I have this incredibly instinctive pleasure-driven process that ends up working out for me and inspiring me. It's almost like a maze, like I know eventually I'll hit the heart of my play if I read enough books.

Film can express things that computers never will. Film is a series of photographs separated by split seconds of darkness. Film is light and shadow.

For me, being a good creative writing teacher is actually kind of being a good therapist. The line is very porous - you can also be a creepy guru/abusive therapist, too, so you have to be very careful. But it feels really important to me.

If anything, I was the opposite of most college students who think they can do anything.

I think growing up in a small town, the kind of people I met in my small town, they still haunt me. I find myself writing about them over and over again.

I never had a lot of ideas. I always have exactly one that is the next project; the idea of a project beyond that project is ludicrous.