Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience.

Between speeches and awards, you can find something to do every other week. It's hard to write. Your focus gets splintered. Once you put one thing in your calendar, that month is gone.

As soon as white folks say a play's good, the theater is jammed with blacks and whites.

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.

All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.

All of art is a search for ways of being, of living life more fully.

I think the play offers (white Americans) a different way to look at black Americans For instance, in 'Fences' they see a garbageman, a person they don't really look at, although they see a garbageman every day. By looking at Troy's life, white people find out that the content of this black garbageman's life is affected by the same things- love, honor, beauty, betrayal, duty. Recognizing that these things are as much part of his life as theirs can affect how they think about and deal with black people in their lives.