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.

Blues is the bedrock of everything I do. All the characters in my plays, their ideas and their attitudes, the stance that they adopt in the world, are all ideas and attitudes that are expressed in the blues.

I write for myself and my goal is bringing that world and that experience of black Americans to life on the stage and giving it a space there.

I found out life's hard but it ain't impossible.

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

For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I have to move on now to something else.

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.