“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.”

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.

All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don’t want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don’t think art should be escapist. That’s a waste of time.

When a critic sets himself up as an arbiter of morality, a judge of the matter and not the manner of a work, he is no longer a critic; he is a censor.

The most profound indication of social malignancy no sense of humor. None of the monoliths could take a joke.

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

Being different is interesting; there’s nothing implicitly inferior or superior about it. Great difference, of course, produces natural caution; and if the differences are too extreme well, then, reality tends to fade away.

The responsibility of the writer is to be a sort of demonic social critic — to present the world and people in it as he sees it and say, “Do you like it? If you don’t like it, change it.

The function of art is to bring people into greater touch with reality, and yet our movie houses and family rooms are jammed with people after as much reality-removal as they can get.

That’s the happiest moment. When it’s all done. When we stop. When we can stop.

I created myself, and I’ll attack anybody I feel like.

Well, when you write about people of a certain age we are in a postsexual situation. If I write about younger people then I write sexually, because their drive is sexual. It depends upon the circumstances.

Anything you put in a play – any speech – has got to do one of two things: either define character or push the action of the play along.

Why we are here is an impenetrable question.

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

Maybe it’s a little more pertinent now since the whole concept of evolution is being questioned by the know-nothing Republican right. Yes, maybe the play’s a little more pertinent now.

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.

There’s no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one.

Blindness has not been for me a total misfortune; it should not be seen in a pathetic way. It should be seen as a way of life: one of the styles of living.

We need to develop meditation so that the understanding arises clearly within oneself. It is not the case that merely by listening to another’s explanation our defilements will disappear.

One positive thought produces millions of positive vibrations.

I don’t like hearing Beatles songs in commercials. It almost renders them useless. I think, ‘Oh God, another one bites the dust.’

When one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a man that observes and narrates it and no longer the man that performed it.

To practice Dhamma means to observe and examine oneself.

For a songwriter, you don’t really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they’re made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.