My plays are always involved with society, but I'm writing about people, too, and it's clear over the years that audiences understand them and care about them. The political landscape changes, the issues change, but the people are still there. People don't really change that much.

Chris: I don't know why it is, but every time I reach out for something I want, I have to pull back because other people will suffer.

Nevertheless, one learned very early that books had to be respected; they were all putative Bibles and to some small degree had a share in holiness.

Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?

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 Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone.

It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves