I don't like the climate in which writers have to work in the USA and I think it's my responsibility to talk about it.

If you're willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.

The arts are the only things that separate us from the other animals. The arts are not decorative. ... They are essential to our comprehension of consciousness and ourselves.

Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt that it didn't matter.

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf ... who's afraid of living life without false illusions.

You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?

You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are.

One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.

School curricula that ignore the arts produce highly educated Barbarians

I think that you know something, but you don't realise that you are playing on another game.

Women love the lie that saves their pride, but never an unflattering truth.

I'm just a seasonal guy. Basketball, football, baseball, boxing, golf. Give it to me all the time.

I always write a story in one sitting.

Shoulda, coulda, and woulda won't get it done.

Considering yourself selflessly selfish is a principle of all great thinkers

If you have an impulse, not if you're going to ruin someone elses' scene, if you have an impulse of a funny little add-on or taking something in a weird direction, try it.

What's new?" is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow.

Fear is the great barrier to human growth.

love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit