In a sense, I feel like the job of the artist at all times is essentially the same, which is simply to tell the truth. I mean, I'm nervous about any prescriptions for what a writer should or shouldn't do.

And I don't consider Broadway the acropolis of theatrical art. I mean Broadway is commercial - that's what it is. It's expensive seats and a lot of them that have to be filled every night. Off-Broadway and off-off Broadway as far as I'm concerned is in New York the pride of New York theater.

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.

It has always seemed to me that Barack Obama has studied intensely and learned a great deal from Lincoln.

Real love isn't ever ambivalent.

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

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