It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

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?

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.

Should Christians govern and are Christians the only ones who are truly qualified to govern, and the answer is, of course, Yes.

I will never vote for Donald Trump.

You're only as tall as your heart will let you be and you're only as small as the world will make you seem.

Guitar solos bore the hell out of me. Only a few guitarists interest me, and it's not about the solos they play, it's about the grooves they create.

Normal' is a dryer setting.

In the '80s, the way radio was programmed, if you didn't have a hit record you weren't going to be able to make any more records. That was it, period.

Happiness is a warm gun.

If you're not living your truth, you're living a lie.

I want to wake up every day and do whatever comes in my mind, and not feel pressure or obligations to do anything else in my life.

The battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I: never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain.