One has to have a complicated kind of optimism. You can't refuse to look at how horrible things are.

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.

Gay TV has been immensely important in transforming American culture in a more gay-positive direction.

I've never seen a great actor do a major role that didn't cost a lot. They're sacrificial animals of a sort.

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

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.

Part of what makes for good writing is an ear for what we would call the poetical. Poetry itself is another thing and it seems to me to be the most difficult writing - that those people are the best writers and they lead the way for everyone else and their writing is frighteningly great.