“Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.”

What people really want in the theater is fantasy involvement and not reality involvement.

Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.

First, I’ll kill the dog with kindness, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll just kill him.

The only time I’ll get good reviews is if I kill myself.

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.

When a play enters my consciousness, is already a fairly well-developed fetus. I don’t put down a word until the play seems ready to be written.

American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties.

Art has an obligation to offend.

As a playwright, I imagine that in one fashion or another I’ve been influenced by every single play I’ve ever experienced.

Art should never try to be popular.

I write to find out what I’m talking about.

When you get old, you can’t talk to people because people snap at you…. That’s why you become deaf, so you won’t be able to hear people talking to you that way.

Writing has got to be an act of discovery, I write to find out what I’m thinking about.

Creativity is magic. Don’t examine it too closely.

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

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

I really understood a lot more about comedy after listening to Bill Hicks, who died at 32 years old. He’s probably the best comedian who ever lived. Although you can’t say that because of Carlin, Cosby and Pryor.

When someone bestows something on you, no matter how true it is, when someone says, ‘Sexiest Man Alive,’ I’m honestly going, ‘Thank you. Right on.’ For me, it’s never canceled out anything, it’s never made me go, ‘Does this make me less talented of an actor?’

We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

Richard Nixon was the best thing that ever happened to journalism. I mean this guy was wonderful. Just when you thought he could get no worse, he got worse.

Expect the best of yourself, and then do what is necessary to make it a reality.

Let your mind see every detail of your own special version of the very best that life can be.

I was a little one-trick pony. I do what I’ve always done. That’s really where my best stuff comes from. I don’t know how it happens. It just happens.

My dad is the best and funniest newspaper columnist. There is nobody anywhere near as good.