That it should be the questions and shape of a life, its total complexity gathered, arranged, and considered, which matters in the end, not some stamp of salvation or damnation that disperses all the complexity into some unsatisfying little decision - the balancing of scales.

I'm in an odd place right now in New York where I routinely get trashed by every daily drama critic and have a few allies among weekly/monthly drama critics, and you sort of plot these things out and figure it out. But it's just what any writer goes through, periods of favor, periods of disfavor. And the trick is just to keep writing and to not let an obsession.

I work best after the deadline has passed, when I'm in a panic.

But I think what made me go into theater was seeing my mother onstage. The first thing she did was Mrs. Frank in 'The Diary of Anne Frank.' The second thing she did was a play about Freud called 'The Far Country.' She played a paralyzed woman in Vienna who goes to see Freud.

The big influence on me was Robert Altman, who, especially in 'Nashville,' transformed my sense of dramatic structure and showed how you could handle overlapping stories.

Theatre for a New Audience is one of America's most admirable and exciting theatre companites...some of the best acted and directed work to be found on American stages, engaging with the canon of world dramatic literature in a vigorous way.

Nothing's lost forever.