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.

Writing should be useful. If it can’t instruct people a little bit more about the responsibilities of consciousness, there’s no point in doing it.

The greatest problem with Irish Wolfhounds, though, is that they don't live very long: their great hearts give out. A good deal of this is genetic, of course, but I think it is in part that they worry so for us, care so much.

There are a number of contemporary playwrights whom I admire enormously, but that's not at all the same thing as being influenced.

Writing has got to be an act of discovery. Finding out things about what one is writing about.

Why we are here is an impenetrable question.

I don't like the climate in which writers have to work in the USA and I think it's my responsibility to talk about it.