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.

Broadway remains the closest thing we have to a national theatre, the place where the greatest number of people can potentially see new work. For an American playwright to say it doesn't matter is simply to capitulate to the current situation.

There are two strains, I think, in American playwriting, of importance. One is traditional narrative realism, which is definitely my strain, and then the other great contribution is American musical theater, which is a whole other kettle of fish.

Love is the world's infinite mutability; lies, hatred, murder even, are all knit up in it; it is the inevitable blossoming of its opposites, a magnificent rose smelling faintly of blood.

I don't feel, finally, that my politics are entirely determined by the fact that I'm a gay man.

Here's the thing about politics: It's not an expression of your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your fond dreams of some utopian future. Progressive people constantly fail to get this.

There's a way in which 'The Illusion' is a play about the theater.