If the work of art is good enough, it must not be criticized for its theme. I don't think it can be argued.

I discover that I am thinking about a play, which is the first awareness I have that a new play is forming. When I'm aware of the play forming in my head, it's already at a certain degree in development.

Writing should be useful. If it can’t instruct people a little bit more about the responsibilities of consciousness, there’s no point in doing it.

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

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.

When you're dealing with a symbol in a realistic play, it is also a realistic fact. You must expect the audience's mind to work on both levels, symbolically and realistically. But we're trained so much in pure, realistic theater that it's difficult for us to handle things on two levels at the same time.

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