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.

A suicide kills two people, that's what it's for!

But we are mostly what we are, and the turtle stretching toward delicious buds on high does not lighten his carapace by his resolve.

Don't take it on yourself. Forget now. Live.

The culture of the United States has flooded the world. It's the inevitable result of a powerful culture, art. We've got an instinctive touch when it comes to the popular mind because we've had no aristocracy. It is a democratic country. And we know without knowing it, without bothering to understand it, how to reach ordinary people, sometimes with the most vulgar, worthless junk on the face of the earth, but we know how to do it [laughter].

The American Dream is the largely unacknowledged screen in front of which all American writing plays itself out.

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.