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.

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.

If you're not entertaining, what the hell's the point?

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.

What they frequently want to do with a movie is, they want to cut out the valleys and just show the peaks. And valleys are important; the valleys make the peaks stand out.

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.