Curiously enough, the only two plays that I've done very much revision on were the two adaptations - even though the shape of them was pretty much determined by the original work. With my own plays, the only changes, aside from taking a speech out here, putting one in there (if I thought I dwelled on a point a little too long or didn't make it explicit enough), are very minor; but even though they're very minor - having to do with the inability of actors or the unwillingness of the director to go along with me - I've always regretted them.

Very few people who met my adoptive mother in the last 20 years of her life could abide her, while many people who have seen my play find her fascinating. Heavens, what have I done?!

It always seems to me better to slough off the answer to a question that I consider to be a terrible invasion of privacy - the kind of privacy that a writer must keep for himself.

As a fairly objective judgment, I do think that my plays as they come out are better than most other things that are put on the same year. But that doesn't make them very good necessarily.

I’m infinitely more involved in the reality of the characters and their situation than I am in everyday life.

If the playwright is strong enough to hold on to reasonable objectivity in the face of either hostility or praise, he'll do his work the way he was going to anyway.

Some writers' view of things depends upon the success of the final result. I'd rather stand or fall on my own concepts. But there is a fine line to be drawn between pointing up something or distorting it.