In those days, you had to like one or the other. You couldn't like Sutherland AND Callas.

Young people have got to start their own theaters, really. All good theater is a kind of mom-and-pop operation. Start your own theater.

I've had wonderful collaborators. They're very different, just as actors are. Working on a show with Nathan Lane is different from working on a show with Chita Rivera. It keeps you on your toes because it's different every time.

In those days, you had to like one or the other. You couldn't like Sutherland AND Callas.

Work with good directors. Without them your play is doomed. At the time of my first play, I thought a good director was someone who liked my play. I was rudely awakened from that fantasy when he directed it as if he loathed it. . . . Work with good actors. A good actor hears the way you (and no one else) write. A good actor makes rewrites easy. A good actor tells you things about your play you didn't know.

There are so many rules about play writing. I'd have a nervous breakdown if I followed them.

I may think I have inalienable rights to be alive and happy but I don't - life is a blessing.