“Art has an obligation to offend.”

Martha: Oh, I like your anger. I think that’s what I like about you most. Your anger.

Your source material is the people you know, not those you don’t know, but every character is an extension of the author’s own personality.

It always seems to me better to slough off the answer to a question that I consider to be a terrible invasion of privacy – the kind of privacy that a writer must keep for himself.

I think I was probably wondering, having looked at human beings for a long time, wondering if evolution ever took place. And I still have my doubts.

Musical beds is the faculty sport around here.

Progress is a set of assumptions.

A writer is a controlled schizophrenic.

I suppose, writing a play is finding out what the play is.

People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them ‘all of my life.’

I am sick of the disparity between things as they are and as they should be. I’m tired.I’m tired of the truth and I’m tired of lying about the truth.

A lot of people are confused by “hello.” A lot of people are confused by a lot of things they shouldn’t be confused by.

I don’t like symbolism that hits you over the head. A symbol should not be a cymbal.

There is chaos behind the civility, of course.

I am not interested in living in a city where there isn’t a production by Samuel Beckett running.

There are always going to be more actors than anybody can ever use.

Writing has got to be an act of discovery. Finding out things about what one is writing about.

If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it.

We cannot and will not walk away from our obligation to at long last face the reckoning on race and racial justice in the country.

There are too many people that depend on me. I’m too obligated. I’m in too far to get out.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.

Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.

I believe it is my obligation to tell the story of the civil rights movement to the next generation.