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

I am not interested in living in a city where there isn’t a production by Samuel Beckett running.

There are always going to be more actors than anybody can ever use.

Writing has got to be an act of discovery. Finding out things about what one is writing about.

You’re alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn’t lived it?

If you have no wounds, how can you know if you’re alive?

When people don’t like the way a play ends, they’re likely to blame the play.

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.

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

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.

Wearing a mask wears you out. Faking it is fatiguing. The most exhausting activity is pretending to be what you know you aren’t.

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

My high school science teacher once told me that much of Genesis is false. But since my high school teacher did not prove he was God by rising from the dead, I’m going to believe Jesus instead.

Religious faith obscures uncertainty where uncertainty exists, allowing the unknown, the implausible, and the false to achieve primacy over the facts.

It is neglect of the Bible which makes so many a prey to the first false teacher whom they hear.

A false conclusion once arrived at and widely accepted is not easily dislodged and the less it is understood the more tenaciously it is held.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.