My parents didn't really know one another.

In my 20s, I was more cynical/despairing (even though I still wrote comically), but I often sent audiences home with rather dark last moments. After a while though, I don't want to send the audience home bummed out, or distressed ... I want to see what's hopeful. I'm not overly cheery all the time, and yet I'm not suicidal either. I do think people can make choices that make their lives happier.

Will this long presidency of George W. Bush ever be over? Living through it is starting to seem like some ghastly, upsetting novel in which the hero is the country, and the president is this disturbing, pig-headed, oblivious villain who makes things worse and worse and worse.

I never graduated to being an atheist. I only graduated to being an agnostic.

I thought if I can do something more playful and light like my play BEYOND THERAPY, it might be a money maker. I think one of the reasons BEYOND THERAPY has legs - it's been very successful for me around the country - is because it's a friendly play, rather sunny.

My biggest problem with organized religion is that God has been imagined as a human being with emotions. I feel if you let go of that, then it's possible to see God as a force, to connect to him or her spiritually.

Then in college I became obsessed with film, and wanted to be part of that.