I think that the Pulitzer Prize is definitely a blessing, but it's also a curse. Because I think that it is a blessing because the work gets more exposure, especially that particular play and then other works of yours too. And then it's a curse because people anticipate that you will write something like you've already written. I think it's really wrong because, you know, I think, as a writer, I'm in a process and I'm somewhere in that process, and I need to continue to develop.

I think I have a certain kind of style. I think at the same time, I'm aware that there's certain things that I did as a playwright in certain plays, and I try not to repeat myself, even though I have a certain kind of sensibility, and I tend to gravitate toward certain things.

I have a really, really difficult time with dramaturgy sometimes in America, because I write about other cultures. I write about a culture that is very difficult, it is very foreign to a North American. A lot of people don't know about what's happening.

One of the good thing about theater in the states, is that the playwright we do have a say, especially in the beginning, when the play is being discussed around the table. We talk about the play, and the actors listen, and there have been cases, you disagree on something... I mean, actors don't usually tell you what they're going to do, they do it. Of course, you try to speak with the director and say, "Is there any way you can bring this actor to do something different?" You try as much as you can, but then, you also have to be open to interpretation.

I was taught to lie at a young age. . . . I think that [A PARK IN OUR HOUSE] describes what people make out of their reality in a totalitarian system like Castro's. They take flight and move into the imagination in order to transcend their immediate reality. I had to write this play. It helped me understand my own loss of innocence.

I'm very much inspired by the Latin music, especially the romantic boleros. Not that when I sit to write a play I listen to boleros. But I think it's part of my DNA, it's part of my upbringing. I grew up in a house where this is the kind of music my parents used to listen to. This is the kind of music I would even hear in my neighborhood. I think that sort of romanticism is part of the culture.

If you think of dramaturgy in North America, which is so realistic and so literal sometimes, sometimes what theaters - especially dramaturgs - ask for is more information, which sometimes can really weigh down a play. There's only so much information a play can have. If you start putting in so much information, it becomes something completely different, it doesn't sing.