I'm still learning so much with every play I write. So I wrestle with word choice, rhythm in final drafts. I think you have to be ruthless.

So much of great American drama has been about a certain kind of dysfunctional family, and maybe my interests are in the kind of strange dysfunction that exists even among deeply functional families.

In reality, life was arranged and human relations were complicated so utterly beyond all understanding that when one thought about it one felt uncanny and one's heart sank.

Writing plays for me is often an act of looking at basement-level fears in terms of where they come from.

The best work that I am able to do is when I am willing to write about questions I haven't quite figured out, or things I'm really wrestling with, things that keep me up at night.

I'm always very self-conscious and assume the way faith or religion might come up in my plays will seem very harsh to people of faith, or who are currently practicing.

I know how much respect I have for people of all different faiths, but especially for my family, who are the most important people in my life, and who are still practicing, and deeply religious.

Priests are very interested in theater in New York! It's this lovely reminder that priests are just people, too, who need to be entertained.

I like to say, but saying is too much." We understand not the same.

Focus on what's ahead. Use what is behind.

Well, there's not a day goes by when I don't get up and say thank you to somebody.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

It should be a very happy marriage - they are both so much in love with him.

Some have called Afghanistan 'the graveyard of empires,' and it probably is the graveyard of empires.

Actors always loved props and-so instead of a hat or an umbrella, they feel really comfortable with a cigarette as a prop.

It is better to live alone, there is no companionship with a fool.

I'm still grappling with all the things most people resolve by the time they're 35. Maybe that's why I make music that is relevant to young people. I'm emotionally stuck at the age of 13.

Go with what is. Use what happens.