I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.

Try to keep the rebel artist alive in you, no matter how attractive or exhausting the temptation.

PROCTOR, his mind wild, breathless: I say--I say--God is dead!

Life is an endless, truly endless struggle. There's no time when we're going to arrive at a plateau where the whole thing gets sorted. It's a struggle in the way every plant has to find it's own way to stand up straight. A lot of the time it's a failure. And yet it's not a failure if some enlightenment comes from it.

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

A play is made by sensing how the forces in life simulate ignorance-you set free the concealed irony, the deadly joke.

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.