He took pains to avoid self-depreciation, self-mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilized world-weariness and a tragic sense of history--the very things, he says, that are most natural to him.

Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else.

I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence.

Be willing to die for your beliefs, or computer printouts of your beliefs.

If an idea seems to find its way towards a stage setting, that's the direction I take. I don't know if I'm trying to achieve anything other than to follow an idea on to the page.

These are the days after. Everything now is measured by after.

My attitudes aren't directed toward characters at all. I don't feel sympathetic toward some characters, unsympathetic toward others. I don't love some characters, feel contempt for others. They have attitudes; I don't.