“One of the tricks to writing great plays is to get people in a room together and not let them leave.”

Somewhere so deep inside that the doctors can’t find it with all their machines and microcameras.

It’s strange, people have asked me what my schedule is and what is my process like, and I can’t even answer it.

I think auditioning can be very reductive and I just hate how actors work really hard and most of them aren’t going to get the job, and I hate putting them through that.

I don’t like the sort of hierarchical, totalitarian type of room a lot of directors can find themselves in.

The rooms I tend to be in are pretty democratic and the best idea wins.

Ice congeals in the stomach. Frost spiderwebs in the lungs.

I think there is a complicated side effect to overcoming evil in that we are forever changed by it.

I show up on time, I am very rigorous about scheduling, and I am very focused.

What I’ve learned in the last few years is that I am merely a storyteller.

I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn’t matter.

I try not to write more than two or three, I try to just write one if possible

I think after we ingest some of the cruelty of the world, it takes years off of our lives, but it also gives us wisdom and a little grace, hopefully a sense of compassion.

Sometimes when I’m directing, the stage manager will have a good idea and that’s okay with me.

The same way you can hear a song in your head even if there isn’t a radio playing; the same way you can hear those blackbirds flying when they’re not in the sky

I don’t like it when it’s consumer advocacy, like how you should spend your $60. Great criticism is a kind of literature.

It just happens quicker and faster now.

Ever console or scold people hurt in human relationships that satisfaction comes from God alone? Stop. Adam’s fellowship with God was perfect, and God Himself declared Adam needed other humans.

The idea of having faith in Jesus has come to be totally isolated from being his apprentice and learning how to do what he said.

Considered as a mere question of physics, (and keeping all moral considerations entirely out of sight,) the appearance of man is a geological phenomenon of vast importance

Some goals are not going to fulfill you. Choose goals that you value and care about.

Christianity has basically communicated to men that the reason God put you on this Earth is to be a good boy. Mind your manners, be a nice guy. That’s soul killing!

The aim of spiritual formation is not behavior modification but the transformation of all those aspects of you and me where behavior comes from…Circumcision of the heart.

The fact is I don’t lead a simple enough inner life. I indulge in excesses, bacchanalia of the spirit. Perhaps I identify too much with everything I read and study. Someone like Dostoevsky still shatters me.

Of course, we do the righteous deed because of our redemption, not for our redemption.