When I'm writing a new play, there's a period where I know I shouldn't be out in public much. I imagine most people who create go through something like this. You willfully loosen some of the inner straps that hold your core together.

I could give you absolutely sterling advice on how to avoid writing, how when you run out of things to do other than going to your desk and writing, when every closet is reorganized and you've called your oldest living relative twice in one day to see what she's up to and there isn't an unanswered e-mail left on your computer or you simply can't bear to answer another one and there is no dignity, not a drop left, in any further evasion of the task at hand, namely writing, well, you can always ask your dentist for a root canal or have an accident in the bathtub instead.

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.

In a way, film and television are in the same sort of traumatic trance that print journalism is. The technology has outpaced our comprehension of its implications.

It isn't easy, it doesn't count if it's easy, it's the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet.

A play is never finished. You'll find out how much I mean that when you read my Last Will and Testament.

There are certainly people for whom politics is not a category that helps you understand human existence. In fact, it's kind of a detour into superficiality, and although I disagree with those people, I don't think it's the case that everyone who writes has to write politically or has to write in opposition to the really horrendous things that are going on on a political level in the world today. There are some writers who simply aren't any good at that and really should stay away from it.