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.

I tend to be sort of quiet and shy and awkward in social situations.

As a playwright, you are a torturer of actors and of the audience as well. You inflict things on people.

Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions.

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.

I'm not a poet. I wish I was a poet but I'm not. I'm a playwright. And so I have a different set of antecedents.

I had a dream, in 1985, I believe, when a friend I'd gone to school with was sick - one of the first people I knew who'd gotten the AIDS virus. I had a dream of him in his bedroom with an angel crashing through the ceiling. I wrote a poem called 'Angels in America.' I've never looked at the poem since the day I wrote it.