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.

What people really want in the theater is fantasy involvement and not reality involvement.

I have learned that neither kindness or cruelty by themselves, or independent of each other, create any effect beyond themselves.

There may be lots of questions that anybody - an actor or a director or anybody - can ask about a character in a play of mine that are not answered in the play, but if it's a question that I don't think is relevant, I don't bother about it. There's no reason to ask it.

Audiences and, to a large extent, critics who want less from theater than it is possible for it to give. If everybody's encouraged to want less, you'll end up with less.

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.

There is chaos behind the civility, of course.