Before the boiling of blood and the searing of skin comes the secret catastrophe: Before Life on Earth becomes finally merely impossible, it will for a long time before have become completely unbearable.

One is told that you're either a hot writer, or you're finished and you're over. But of course, the more you hang around and the more you become aware not only of what "reputation" is for other writers, but also what your own reputation is, you become aware that it's much more complicated than the conventional media would have you believe.

I have kind of an almost religious feeling about poets. I usually refuse to meet them because I admire them so much. Except for Poe.

The act of thinking and interpreting is so central to Judaism that it makes more sense that we've become people like Woody Allen - thinkers and talkers and drafters of law.

In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead.

One wants to move through life with elegance and grace, blossoming infrequently but with exquisite taste, and perfect timing, like a rare bloom, a zebra orchid... One wants... But one so seldom gets what one wants, does one?

I love musicals but it's very, very different. It's really just a different form than serious drama, and has very different rules and a completely different set of characters and requirements and ambitions. It maybe shouldn't be as separate as it is, but it's got a different history. In terms of serious drama, I think you'd have to say that you could break it down essentially into the narrative realist tradition and experimental theater.