Talent is the gift plus the passion - a desire to succeed so intense that no force on earth can stop it.

He's too nervous to kill himself. He wears his seat belt in a drive-in movie.

When its 100 degrees in New York, it's 72 in Los Angeles. When its 30 degrees in New York, in Los Angeles it's still 72. However, there are 6 million interesting people in New York, and only 72 in Los Angeles.

A lot of your personality is formed before you're 12, obviously, but only a few of my plays use characters from my childhood. The more mature plays are affected only by my adult experiences.

I don't want to restrict the life of a play to a particular production. The original actors might leave after the first six months, and I want the play to last 30 or 40 years. You write for the character, not the actor on the stage.

Baptists are only funny underwater.

If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven't been born yet.