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.

I don't know what it says about me that I have a greater affinity with the damaged. Probably nothing good.

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.

Divorce is an embarrassing public admission of defeat.

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.

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.

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