Everything we are is at every moment alive in us.

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.

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.

I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult.

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

The Greeks used to use the same stories, the same mythology, time after time, different authors. There was no premium placed upon an original story, and indeed, Shakespeare likewise. A lot of people wrote plays about great kings. They didn't expect a brand-new story. It was what that new author made of the old story. It is probably the same now. We disguise it by inventing what seem to be new stories, but they're basically the same story anyway.

A doctor could make a million dollars if he could figure out a way to bring a boy into the world without a trigger finger.