I don't write at the library, because I smoke when I work or would like the possibility of a smoke. Also, I need to be at my own desk.

It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.... A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.

If enough things that are untrue are said about you, no one will know what really is true.

I think theater ought to be theatrical ... you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it's -- there's always some kind of ambush involved in the experience. You're being ambushed by an unexpected word, or by an elephant falling out of the cupboard, whatever it is.

Of all forms of fiction, autobiography is the most gratuitous.

It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean one thinks of it like being alive in a box, one keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead, which should make all the difference, shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never know you were in a box would you?... Even taking into account the fact that you're dead, it isn't a pleasant thought. Especially if you're dead, really. Ask yourself, if I asked you straight off-- I'm going to stuff you in this box now would you rather be alive or dead? Naturally you'd prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all.

Writing a play is like smashing that [glass] ashtray, filming it in slow motion, and then running the film in reverse, so that the fragments of rubble appear to fly together. You start - or at least I start - with the rubble.