It's really interesting that whenever you do something that is so out of character, like having an emotional outburst, that you don't get in trouble.

And all writing is creating or spinning dreams for other people so they won't have to bother doing it themselves.

Part of that is that New York has proved to be too much fun for me to live and work; I love New York so much.

That's what I like about [smoking] . . . taking a drag off of death, Mmm! Gives me a sense of controlling my own destiny. What power! What exhilaration! Want a drag?

The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel, Mississippi.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, really in suburbia, so my mother was in community theatre plays.