What I hate about kitchen-sink dramas is [this idea] that the set is real, therefore you're going to be seeing truth. You have to earn truth. Truth can't be a part of the fact that people appear to talk that way and live in that room. You're looking for the poetry in something, and I don't mean poetry in the fancy sense. Naturalism believes by just replicating a thing you give the truth, rather than earning the truth.

You can't be a sort of pioneer.

The life of a dancer is tragically short. What is remarkable about the New York City Ballet is that it makes us forget that. Because it keeps the ballet alive.

Everyone talks about America, this great country. You hear, "I'm more patriotic than you are. No, I'm more patriotic!" But how few people know the history of this country and how we came into being. That's the part that just amazed me.

I think a playwright must be his own dramaturg. I believe in a theater where the director and the playwright work together to create what they need.

I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it extremely comforting that we're so close. I also find it like Chinese water torture, that we're so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection... I am bound, you are bound, to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people.

Sometimes you have to protect the life of the play. It seems like spelling out mysterious, musical details can destroy a play by making the motivations too clear, too simplex.