I feel that I speak the musical language.

After I won the Pulitzer, there was this sense of, 'OK, that's enough for you. Now go away.' What I wanted was to keep writing, keep working. But no one would produce anything of mine they didn't think would be as big as ''night, Mother.'

Knowing is the most profound kind of love, giving someone the gift of knowledge about yourself.

There are things that music can do that language could never do, that painting could never do, or sculpture. Music is capable of going directly to the source of the mystery. It doesn't have to explain it. It can simply celebrate it.

In the theater, when people hear that you're writing a play, they want to know what it's all about, whether there's a role for them. You write it fairly quickly, and it becomes a group activity before you're really ready to have company.

Music expresses longing and love and joy better than any piece of dialogue you can ever write.

Family is just accident.... They don't mean to get on your nerves. They don't even mean to be your family, they just are.