I think it's really important to give yourself a very big question that you're working on that you can come home to, even if you, you know, are going to have to go without a cup of coffee or even a meal, that that should nourish you.

I write plays about big, intense subjects.

You know if we were to look back and how we were in 1955 living in Jim Crow, living in segregation, living in segregated schools, it's hard to believe that it was America, but it really was.

People in power have to be careful about what comes out of their mouth. They have to find exactly the right word that can’t be attacked.

The American idea is as promising, imaginative, and full of the unexpected as the land itself. The land represents freedom – the frontier, the ability to make a new future with your own bare hands.

I call the language of political figures, pundits and administrators ‘the haute couture of language.’

President Obama called for a ‘we’ nation in his Inauguration Address. Art convenes. It is not just inspirational. It is aspirational. It pricks the walls of our compartmentalized minds, opens our hearts and makes us brave. And that’s what we need most in our country today.

People who are sick, or who have been sick, or have come close to death have a lot to say – and they want you to hear it.

I love studying how people are. Not just what they’re saying, but how they are, what they’re doing.

You hang around actors, or dancers, the minute you sneeze, everybody has a remedy, and we’re all on a million different kinds of diets, and different kinds of things that we do for exercise.