I try to work every day because you have no refuge but writing. When you're going through a period of unhappiness, a broken love affair, the death of someone you love, or some other disorder in your life, then you have no refuge but writing.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

Maggie, we're through with lies and liars in this house. Lock the door.

In all these years, you never believed I loved you. And I did. I did so much. I did love you. I even loved your hate and your hardness.

Switch clicking off in my head, turning the hot light off and the cool night on and — [He looks up, smiling sadly.] — all of a sudden there's—peace!

Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.

I don't want realism. I'll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell the truth. I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!