There are a number of contemporary playwrights whom I admire enormously, but that's not at all the same thing as being influenced.

If you're willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.

The arts are the only things that separate us from the other animals. The arts are not decorative. ... They are essential to our comprehension of consciousness and ourselves.

Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt that it didn't matter.

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf ... who's afraid of living life without false illusions.

You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?

You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are.

One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.

School curricula that ignore the arts produce highly educated Barbarians

There's times when you catch a ball and really didn't even see that ball. You're like, 'That couldn't have been all me.'

Certainty always produces questions, uncertainty statements. It is a balancing law of nature.

Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

I wished God were like He used to be, a few notches lower. I wanted Him to be lofty enough to help me but not so uncontrollable. I longed for His warm presence, times when He seemed more… safe.

Everybody hurts sometimes Everybody cries

American Gods is about 200,000 words long, and I'm sure there are words that are simply in there 'cause I like them. I know I couldn't justify each and every one of them.

If a woman were about to proceed to her execution, she would demand a little time to perfect her toilet.

I meet kids now who become novelists, poets, write for the theater and movies, who were simply inspired by what they saw during the Spoleto Festival.

I'm not too proud of the movies I made as a grownup except for 'That Hagen Girl', which nobody remembers but which gave me a chance to act.