The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.

A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from.

The growing sensitivity of people to any sort of open and frank discussion of important issues is no service to civilisation, let alone law and order. I wrote a play about a man who happened to be a salesman, and several organisations of sales people flew to arms. Now it is the lawyers. If I am to back away from these objections you must surely see that I shall be forced to write about people with no occupation whatever.

Is this, I wondered, why writing exists—as a proof against oblivion? And not just for the writer himself but also for all the others who swim in the depths where the sun of the culture never penetrates?

My plays are always involved with society, but I'm writing about people, too, and it's clear over the years that audiences understand them and care about them. The political landscape changes, the issues change, but the people are still there. People don't really change that much.

One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives.

We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!

If I see an ending, I can work backward.

I’m a writer, and everything I write is both a confession and a struggle to understand things about myself and this world in which I live. This is what everyone’s work should be-whether you dance or paint or sing. It is a confession, a baring of your soul, your faults, those things you simply cannot or will not understand or accept. You stumble forward, confused, and you share. If you’re lucky, you learn something.