For writers that rehearsal period is death. It is the most destructive thing of all to a script.

Belonging to the Dramatists Guild Council where, with my fellow dramatists, I can directly affect (and protect) the professional lives of all American Playwrights has always made me feel that I am returning as much to the theatre as I withdraw. Because only playwrights can ensure the well-being of playwrights. No one else will do it for us.

At early previews, the theater gossips are there, wishing you ill every night. They don't grant you any slack. Agents are in from Hollywood. Your friends are there. People who are going to spread the word-of-mouth. If something doesn't work, everyone will know.

There are two kinds of actors: those with one job too few, who have to take every one that comes along, and those with one job too many, who can always turn down the one they don't want.

Hollywood is a cottage industry involving a very small number of people, and around the edges are enormous numbers of people trying to get into it and work.

Disease, a simple famine, plagues of locusts everywhere, or a cataclysmic earthquake, I'd accept with some despair, but no, you sent us Congress! Good God, Sir, was that fair?

Musicals are written and then rewritten. Those things used to happen on the road. Now they are done in New York during preview performances.