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.

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.

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'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.

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.

Here's the thing, " he said. "People see me as a bridge. I'm not as alive as I used to be, but I'm not yet dead. I'm sort of...in-between

You cannot parcel out freedom in pieces because freedom is all or nothing.

Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved.

Man is the religious animal. He is the only one that's got true religion, several of them.

I think that it's good for us to be able to travel in space and do research in space, and I emphasize the research, because space travel to me is far more than just seeing how far we can go.

As for pictures and museums, that don't trouble me. The worst of going abroad is that you've always got to look at things of that sort. To have to do it at home would be beyond a joke.

I’m not Hans Christian Andersen. Nobody’s gonna make a statue in the park with a lot of scrambling kids climbing up me. I won’t have it, okay?

Back in the day, I would wear up to 45 pounds of gold. It would take me four hours to get dressed!

Knowledge is constructed, not transferred