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

You cant get very far in this world without your dossier being there first.

The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.

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.

... so many tremendous decisions in life are made because it is five o'clock.

Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be … when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am.

I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.