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.

At the heart of the failure of most plays is the inability to carry on a thoughtful conversation about your work with yourself.

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

What's so good about a heaven where, one of these days, you're going to get your embarrassing old body back?

When you fight something long enough, it becomes a center pole right in your life and you count on it to be there to fight with.

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.'