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

The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt that it didn't matter.

I don't feel that catharsis in a play necessarily takes place during the course of a play. Often it should take place afterward.

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.

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.

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. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.