You know, people see [August: Osage County], and I tell them that it's based on my family, and they assume that I came from some kind of horrible, hysterical circumstances. That's not true. My family, my nuclear family, was actually very close. My mom and dad were great parents and they encouraged a real rich, creative life for me and my brothers. My extended family, like every family, has some darkness, and some violence of some kind, emotional or otherwise, in their past.

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.

I never know what the hell I'm writing about, I never know what the next thing I'm writing about is, I never have a plan.

A certain giving up of control is good for the soul.

Divorce is an embarrassing public admission of defeat.

I'm aware that a film is different than a play, and that a film isn't going to be the filmed record of the play. It's its own separate entity, and I've come to peace with that.

We're all just people, some of us accidentally connected by genetics, a random selection of cells. Nothing more.