Plays can outlast even the opinions of the chief film critic of The New York Times and that reviews, although they feel devastating in the immediate moment, are not remotely as significant as the significance you endow them with on the day that they appear.

I certainly wake up every morning and thank God that I'm not a novelist because the theater is tough, but novel writing is infinitely harder. Especially with the economics of serious fiction being what they are in America.

The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deliberate.

I don't think you have to earn your income as an artist to be an artist. But if you are an artist, then art is what you do, whether or not you're paid for doing it; it is what you do, not what you are. I regard artist not as a description of temperament but as a category of profession, of vocation.

Unions are susceptible to the same ills that befall all human societies.

I think that it's worthwhile to explore the ways in which you write the person that's writing your plays as opposed to simply assuming that it's all a natural process and there's no design in it. Because your public persona is designed, to a certain extent, and you can have fun and profit at various times doing that.

You don't go to the movies to do historical research, unless it's historical research about the movies.