I'm a history person; I love history. But I am conditioned by the present.

A life like Nixon's is filled with shame and filled with glory. He loved to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "He was a man; sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but he was a man." I love that line.

The past assumes the nature of the present.

The Greek playwrights, we're all beholden to them, every one of us.

I do have a side as a citizen, and I've always expressed it, and that's where I've gotten into misunderstandings, because some people see me as a leftist nut or whatever. A conspiracy nut. All that stuff. These are definitions that don't really apply to a dramatist, because a dramatist is working from empathy.

I'd rather get past the tyranny of now, where you get judged for something based on what's happening at the moment.

Well, George W.Bush wanted to privatize Social Security. It's an ideological thing.