I was so mad at my agent. I had polished and polished and polished [the play], and he referred to it as a draft. I wrote him a bitter letter: How can you call this a draft? I don't do drafts! By now I've done 18, and its turning, in the rehearsal room, into a 19th.

Is there a word more passionate than passion? Obsession, total immersion, the feeling that everything else doesn't matter.

I can't claim to be disenchanted "with the current state of fiction" because I read so little of it. My reading is mostly drawn to history.

There's a paradox in rereading. You read the first time for rediscovery: an encounter with the confirming emotions. But you reread for discovery: you go to the known to figure out the workings of the unknown, the why of the familiar how.

To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.

All politicians know that every 'temporary' political initiative promised as a short-term poultice stays on the books forever.

History ... isn't simply what has happened. It's a judgment on what has happened.