“The characters’ lives have gone on before the moment you chose to have the action of the play begin. And their lives are going to go on after you have lowered the final curtain on the play, unless you’ve killed them off.”

I am pleased and reassured by the fact that a lot of younger playwrights seem to pay me some attention and gain some nourishment from what I do.

The act of creation, as you very well know, is a lonely and private matter and has nothing to do with the public area… the performance of the work one creates.

A playwright has a responsibility in his society not to aid it, or comfort it, but to comment and criticize it.

Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process–it is, after all, black magic.

In a democracy you cannot stop public access to that art that will most misinform the people. You cannot stop people from being misinformed. But what you can do is to educate the people to the point that they will throw the rascals out.

I have been both overpraised and under praised. I assume by the time I finish writing — and I plan to go on writing until I’m 90 or gaga it will all equal itself out.

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.

The lower strata are suffering all kinds of oppression and the injustice that is inflicted upon them has many faces and many facets.

If the producer gives me a guarantee that he will sell the film at a lower price to the distributors, fair enough, then I will charge less!

Sorrow is only one of the lower notes in the oratorio of our blessedness.

None is fitter than the three lower degrees of Freemasonry

Even though we are not sure of the links, Iraq was one of the countries that did not lower its flags in mourning on 9/11.

Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.

There is no higher or lower goal. There is only one goal, Self-Realization.

Do not follow the desires of your lower self. Should the Lord wish.