All you need is the blues. To me, the blues is the book, it's the bible, it's everything.

My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.

Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.

I believe in the American theatre. I believe in its power to inform about the human condition, its power to heal ... its power to uncover the truths we wrestle from uncertain and sometimes unyielding realities.

I know some things when I start. I know, let's say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it's going to be about a piano, but that's it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along.

You get to the point where your demons, which are terrifying, get smaller and smaller and you get bigger and bigger.

My greatest influence has been the blues. And that's a literary influence, because I think the blues is the best literature that we as black Americans have.