Within a year after I write a play I forget the experience of having written it. And I couldn't revise or rewrite it if I wanted to. Up until that point, I'm so involved with the experience of having written the play, and the nature of it, that I can't see what faults it might have. The only moment of clear objectivity that I can find is at the moment of critical heat - of self-critical heat when I'm actually writing.

Very few people who met my adoptive mother in the last 20 years of her life could abide her, while many people who have seen my play find her fascinating. Heavens, what have I done?!

American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties.

I think you remember everything ... you just can't bring it to mind all the time.

Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, but every character is an extension of the author's own personality.

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

If I've been accused a number of times of writing plays where the endings are ambivalent, indeed, that's the way I find life.