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.

You can't kind of take away, you either do or you don't. If you kind of take away something you're a failure.

You can read ten books and finally come across one detail, and it's like, "now everything else makes sense. Now I know where I am."

You don't push the button that says "Now I will write something that resonates in time." You don't know. It's what happens after a play is finished.

We live in a world where amnesia is the most wished-for state. When did history become a bad word?

I only do business with the people I do business with. The people I do business with find out I do business with the people I don't do business with.... I can't do business with you.

New Orleans was a thrilling place of all kinds of races, it was a dangerous place. It was really and truly the only international city on the continent of North America. There were all different races and everything was celebrated, and it was a place of difference, and everybody was different and it was so odd, the minute that America took over, the minute that the Louisiana territory became part of the United States of America, instantly you were either black or white. There was no nuance. and so a free man of color who could own property was suddenly not allowed to.