All of my plays have puzzled some people, and I'm happy to say delighted a few, but a lot of people have just not seen how quite to look at them. And this film... if you like my writing, you'll like this film. If you don't, you won't like the film. It's pretty faithful to - it's a pretty uncompromising presentation of my way of seeing things, I suppose.

In my early 20s, I studied history and politics, and I really thought that perhaps I would devote my life to that.

I do things, and other people laugh at them. I rarely know what the joke is supposed to be or why they're laughing.

I choose parts because I don't want to be embarrassed when the movie comes out. What if my friends were to see the movie? What if my niece or nephew wandered into the theater and saw the movie? I don't want to be too ashamed of it.

What I'm really involved in when I'm writing is something that no one ever mentions when they see any play. Writing is like trying to make gunpowder out of chemicals. You have these words and sentences and the strange meanings and associations that are attached to the words and sentences, and you're somehow cooking these things all up so that they suddenly explode and have a powerful effect. That's what absorbs me from day to day in writing a play.

We're in an emergency situation. The United States has become an absolutely terrifying country, and I would hope that I could participate in some way in stopping the horror and the brutality.

Patriotism is considered to be an emotion a person ought to feel. But why? Why is it nobler to love your own country than to love someone else's?