The best of our theater is standing on tiptoe, striving to see over the shoulders of father and mother. The worst is exploiting and wallowing in the self-pity of adolescence and obsessive keyhole sexuality. The way out, as the poet says, is always through.

A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.

Sometimes...it's better for a man just to walk away. But if you can't walk away? I guess that's when it's tough.

The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning.

The writer must be in it; he can't be to one side of it, ever. He has to be endangered by it. His own attitudes have to be tested in it. The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing himself, always.

The arts can do more to sustain the peace than all the wars, the armaments, and the threats and warnings of politicians.

Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You'll never get out of the jungle that way.