But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.

The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel, Mississippi.

Somehow I got to be one of five or six actors that the directors would use as guinea pigs at this directing colloquium, where people pay to listen to and watch the directors direct.

It's really interesting that whenever you do something that is so out of character, like having an emotional outburst, that you don't get in trouble.

My first few plays took place in the South and even The Lucky Spot was in the thirties but in Louisiana.

In movement class, you had to lie on the floor and get your alignment in to pass the class.

That's what I like about [smoking] . . . taking a drag off of death, Mmm! Gives me a sense of controlling my own destiny. What power! What exhilaration! Want a drag?

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

What I loved about the acting class was that you got to think all day long about a person that wasn't you, and figure out why they were sad and what they wanted, what they dreamed.

I find it fascinating to think about what the world is going to be like when people won't talk anymore.

That was always my inclination, to start on a new play before the other one gets done, because at least you'll have something to go back to if that play gets trashed.

The greatest life is to share, to sacrifice and to serve.

I wanted to - any chance I had to dress up as a boy, like Halloween, I would be a pirate or a ghost that wore a tie. A hobo.

If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.

There is no such thing as a good tax.

Most critics write critiques which are by the authors they write critiques about. That would not be so bad, but then most authorswrite works which are by the critics who write critiques about them.

The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work.

A bench in the street can be a good writer because all kind of material comes onto it like a heavy rain!

When you're in the battlefield, survival is all there is.

It doesn't cost anything to say hi when you pass someone else in the hallway, whereas, most corporations if you pass you avoid eye contact.