I need a release from whatever I'm writing.

African American women in particular have incredible buying power. Statistically, we go to the movies more than anyone. We have made Tyler Perrys career. His films open with $25 million almost consistently.

When you begin a play, you're going to have to spend a lot of time with those characters, so those characters are going to have to be rich enough that you want to take a very long journey with them. That's how I begin thinking about what I want to write about and who I want to write about.

Each play I write has its own unique origin story.

It's much easier to conjure characters strictly from your imagination than to have to think about whether you're representing people in a truthful way.

I was repeatedly told that there isn't an African American woman who can open a show on Broadway. I said, 'Well, how do we know? How do we know if we don't do it?' I said, 'I think you're wrong.'

In the business of war, the role of women is really to maintain normalcy and ensure that there is cultural continuity.