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

Naturally, no writer who's any good at all would sit down and put a sheet of paper in a typewriter and start typing a play unless he knew what he was writing about.

As a playwright, I imagine that in one fashion or another I've been influenced by every single play I've ever experienced.

There is chaos behind the civility, of course.

Every monster was a man first.

In the two or three or four months that it takes me to write a play, I find that the reality of the play is a great deal more alive for me than what passes for reality. I'm infinitely more involved in the reality of the characters and their situation than I am in everyday life. The involvement is terribly intense.

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.