Listen to me: die after me, all right? I don't care what else you do, where you go, how you screw up your life, just... survive. Outlive me, please.

Sometimes my family thinks I've made my childhood a bit more Dickensian than it was, and it probably wasn't all that bad. But I was uncomfortable as a kid.

I don't think I'd give advice. That never pays off. That's always a bad idea. If they follow your advice and it doesn't work out, or if they don't follow your advice, somehow you're on the hook for it.

You get to know a character that you play on-stage in a pretty profound way over a length of time. I don't want to sound highfalutin and say you become the character, you just start bringing more and more of yourself to the part until the character and actor, it's hard to tell them apart. It's some weird amalgam. In film, because of the period of time, I don't know that you ever get that deep into it.

My last refuge, my books: simple pleasures, like finding wild onions by the side of a road, or requited love.

In theater, the playwright is the boss, period. The decisions will go through him or her. In movies, the writer is pretty far down on the list.

Well, one of the things we're supposed to be able to do as playwrights is write from a place of empathy, get into another character's shoes and experience things both mundane and tragic. And people don't - like me right now - people aren't necessarily the most eloquent when trying to express their emotions. I guess I feel as a playwright that those people deserve a voice, too, a voice that isn't so articulate that they themselves can no longer identify with it.