Charity in the theater begins and ends with those who have a play opening within a week of one's own.

All the mistakes I ever made were when I wanted to say 'No' and said 'Yes'.

The self-hatred that destroys is the waste of unfulfilled promise.

The only credential the city asked was the boldness to dream. For those who did, it unlocked its gates and its treasures, not caring who they were or where they came from.

I have had many successes and many failures in my life. My successes have always been for different reasons, but my failures have always been for the same reason: I said yes when I meant no.

You'd be surprised how many kings are only a queen with a moustache.

There's nothing the matter with Hollywood that a good earthquake couldn't cure.

One of the grave dangers inherent in the various stages of any theatrical career-whether it be budding, quiescent or diminishing-is the advice of friends.

Poor people know poor people, and rich people know rich people. It is one of the few things La Rochefoucauld did not say, but then La Rochefoucauld never lived in the Bronx.

Far more quickly than reason and logic, irony can penetrate rage and puncture self-pity.

Playwriting, like begging in India, is an honorable but humbling profession.

If any religion allows you to torture animals or sacrifice an animal for the sake of procuring god’s favor, then that is not a religion. It is an absurd practice of inhumanity.

The worship of God is in our attitude to people

...a passing face together with his grief turned you into a weeping Madonna...

Again with the us. My heart beat a little faster. How many times had I dreamed of being one of the chosen few? To be truly accepted by the in crowd instead of sitting on the sidelines of my own life?

Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?

Always have one possibility in mind and that is to go to the top, to be the best. Everything else should just be a means to that end.

I never see things I make in the same way that the audience does. You can never do that.

We all seek out stress. We hate the wrong kinds of stress but when it's the right kind, we love it - we pay good money to be stressed by a scary movie, a roller coaster ride, a challenging puzzle.

When a man tells me God hath spoken in a dream, I know he dreamt that God spoke to him.

Focused will is incredible. If you have a dream and you don’t give up no matter what obstacles come up, then life’s problems will fall away and you will get what you want. It happens. It works.