“The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel, Mississippi.”

Plays are so much more special if they’ve never ever had a production, but I think you can really work on a play and make it better with each production.

I love writing for the screen.

The impetus behind going to graduate school was a year after graduating from college spent in Dallas working at the dog food factory and Bank America and not having met success in my chosen field, which at that point was being an actress.

It’s called Sisters of the Winter Madrigal. It was interesting for me to see it done after so many years; because I wrote it and I didn’t realize what a rage I was in.

In movement class, you had to lie on the floor and get your alignment in to pass the class.

I was just restless with being in school; so I went out to Los Angeles.

My first few plays took place in the South and even The Lucky Spot was in the thirties but in Louisiana.

And all writing is creating or spinning dreams for other people so they won’t have to bother doing it themselves.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

What I loved about the acting class was that you got to think all day long about a person that wasn’t you, and figure out why they were sad and what they wanted, what they dreamed.

I’m very into the first production of the show.

I tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money.

There are probably brilliant people, geniuses, alive today who don’t even know how to say, “Hello, how do you do?” because their minds are absorbed with electronic images.

But when I got to SMU and decided to take a playwriting class, I said this isn’t a bad idea. IfI write characters, they could be as dumb as me, and I don’t have to be very smart.

Part of that is that New York has proved to be too much fun for me to live and work; I love New York so much.

That was always my inclination, to start on a new play before the other one gets done, because at least you’ll have something to go back to if that play gets trashed.

Grandchildren now don’t write a thank you for the Christmas presents.

There are three days that are really slow for restaurants – Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning.

No sane local official who has hung up an empty stocking over the municipal fireplace is going to shoot Santa Claus just before a hard Christmas.

I eat everything I want on Christmas day.

I really don’t watch what I eat. It’s not like you have #‎ Christmas every day!

Many people celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday for the most part than a Christian holiday. Obviously, many, many people celebrate it as a Christian holiday. But then there’s even more people or there’s additional people who celebrate it as a secular holiday as well.

God seeks to influence humanity. This is at the heart of the Christmas story. It is the story of light coming into the darkness, of a Savior to show us the way, of light overcoming the darkness, of God’s work to save the world.