Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.

If you want a commercial success - it's the confusion of commerce with art. A successful play is not considered to be the best written. It is the one that sells the most tickets. Those standards are destructive [to theatre].

Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.

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.

It's the function of a playwright to write. Some playwrights write a large number of plays, some write a small number.

In rehearsals I get so completely wrapped up with the reality that's occurring on stage that by the time the play has opened I'm not usually quite as aware of the distinctions between what I'd intended and the result. There are many ways of getting the same result.