Who knows better than artists how much ugliness there is on the way to beauty, how many ghastly, mortifying missteps, how many days of granitic blockheadedness and dismaying ineptitude there is on the way to accomplishment, how partial all accomplishment is, how incomplete?

Theater really gets damaged when there is a paucity of good criticism around.

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.

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

You learn that existence is legible but that you have to have a critical mind if you're going to read it.

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.

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