Everybody wants to go see the big hit [at the theatre]. Not because it's any good. Because it's the big hit and everybody wants to be able to talk about the big hit.

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?

I am a Doctor. A.B... M.A... PH.D... ABMAPHID! Abmaphid has been variously described as a wasting disease of the frontal lobes, and as a wonder drug. It is actually both.

As a playwright, I imagine that in one fashion or another I've been influenced by every single play I've ever experienced.

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.

To write a play one must be born a playwright. Otherwise, you're starting at a huge disadvantage.

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.