I've seen an awful lot of plays that I'd read before they were put into production and been shocked by what's happened to them. In the attempt to make them straightforward and commercially successful, a lot of things go out the window.

Read the great stuff, but read the stuff that isn't so great, too. Great stuff is very discouraging. If you read only Beckett and Chekhov, you'll go away and only deliver telegrams for Western Union.

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

Well, when I was six years old I decided, not that I was going to be, but with my usual modesty, that I was a writer.

When you're dealing with a symbol in a realistic play, it is also a realistic fact. You must expect the audience's mind to work on both levels, symbolically and realistically. But we're trained so much in pure, realistic theater that it's difficult for us to handle things on two levels at the same time.

Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.