Today, [theatre's] more likely to be consciously not aimed at the public, but at a more sophisticated or educated public. . . . The result is that some of the sheer humanity has leaked out of the enterprise.

The job is to ask questions - it always was - and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.

He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.

The world is always ending; the exact date depends on when you came into it.

Great drama is great questions or it is nothing but technique. I could not imagine a theater worth my time that did not want to change the world.

There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism.

One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives.