The arts are the only things that separate us from the other animals. The arts are not decorative. ... They are essential to our comprehension of consciousness and ourselves.

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

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'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.

You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?

One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.

In the theater, which is a sort of jungle, one does have to be a little bit careful. One mustn't be so rigid or egotistical to think that every comma is sacrosanct. But at the same time there is the danger of losing control and finding that somebody else has opened a play and not you.