The theater is a communal event, like church. The playwright constructs a mass to be performed for a lot of people. She writes a prayer, which is really just the longings of one heart.

If someone wants to say 'I love you' in a straight play, they say it, and then it's the other person's turn to talk. But in a song, you can sing about it for another three minutes. The musical form has that unique opportunity to express at length what joy really feels like.

When ''night, Mother' opened, I did not know how long it would be before I would have another show on Broadway.

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.

Success is always something that you have to recover from.

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.'

Jesus was a suicide, if you ask me.