“The number of elements that have to go into a hit would break a computer down. the right season for that play, the right historical moment, the right tonality.”

Can anyone remember love? It’s like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume.

I think now that the great thing is not so much the formulation of an answer for myself, for the theater, or the play-but rather the most accurate possible statement of the problem.

I cannot sleep for dreaming; I cannot dream but I wake and walk about the house as though I’d find you coming through some door.

Let you look sometimes for the goodness in me, and judge me not.

Well, all the plays that I was trying to write were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion which you could observe and walk away from.

I’m the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.

The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.

If I see an ending, I can work backward.

Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.

Don’t be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.

I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn’t very difficult.

A child’s spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.

I think it’s a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one’s self.

Without alienation, there can be no politics.

He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.

You were the best and worst nights of my life fucking while the flames lick us at least you’re a distraction from my spiritual death. You’re a god damn angel in a crack den.

I had to leave you to find me I had to lose you to love me.

They may seem like the perfect fit, for your incomplete puzzle. But they’re not the right piece.

Your ghost still haunts the empty halls of my soul.

Here I am spitting up roses in your name I hope you choke on the thorns.

I don’t wanna settle scores I’m just no longer yours.

You ask me questions that you don’t want to know the answer to.

Even my tears fall for you.