A lot interests me - but nothing surprises me particularly.

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

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.

Art is nowhere near as dangerous as it should be.

I said I was impressed, Martha. I'm beside myself with jealousy. What do you want me to do, throw up?

Usually, the way I write is to sit down at a typewriter after that year or so of what passes for thinking, and I write a first draft quite rapidly. Read it over. Make a few pencil corrections, where I think I've got the rhythms wrong in the speeches, for example, and then retype the whole thing. And in the retyping I discover that maybe one or two more speeches will come in. One or two more things will happen, but not much.

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.