The pity of living only once is that there is no way, ever, to be sure which sorrows are inevitable.

When it comes time to do your own life, you either perpetuate your childhood or you stand on it and finally kick it out from under.

Many of us write because we are readers and have grown up in a long tradition, and we want to be able to add to that extraordinary flow of interpretations of the world.

All schoolchildren are hostages to red tape and fiscal insufficiency.

[On book promotion:] The reward for writing well appears to be not to be able to do it for a long time.

They are the kind of people who are embarrassed by money, a dead middle-class giveaway. Poor people are not embarrassed by money and are contemptuous of those who are.

When it comes time to do your own life you either perpetuate your childhood or you stand on it and finally kick it out from under.

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

To be saved is here, local and mortal

Sin is what is new, strong, surprising, strange. The theatre must take an interest in sin if the young are to be able to go there.

I think that good parenting should allow children to be children. That naivety and slightly open way of looking at the world is very valuable.

I'll know how to die with courage that is easier than living.

It's one thing believing in yourself, it's another thing having other people believe in you, and that is the greatest gift, honestly.

All of us are living with dogmas that we accept as truths. When one of these is overturned, there's an initial gasp, soon followed by a rush of exhilaration.

The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.

You can change things, you can make things better.

I did a play called Throne of Straw when I was 11, at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. It became really clear to me at that point that I enjoyed acting more than any other experience I was having.