The most glorious thing about working in the collaborative art is when you have somebody like Susan Kingsley or Kathy Bates who are better than your play.

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?

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

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.

Lie to yourself, not to someone else

I had a birthday one night on a farm we were shooting on. I walked into the tent, and there were 150 people waiting for me, all wearing masks of my face.

You probably don't call home and say, 'Hi, mom. I am facing Pete Schourek tonight.' Names and stats don't do it. You have to do it out on the field.

All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent

While I think storytelling is a meaningful way to spend your life... it does feel a little bit secondary or off-point.

Negative energies can't touch you if you are in a state of meditativeness.

...Difficult relationships come into our lives for a reason. No one would choose them, certainly. But if we let them, they can teach us how to be flexible with others and more forgiving.

there's something nice about knowing that i'm not the only one who doesn't quite fit the part.

I don't exercise. I'm skinny fat. I worry about being too skinny. You should see my brother, he's, like, emaciated. We both just happen to be really skinny.

As long as I'm fighting, I'm not dying." - Mara Jade Skywalker