My first wife is a good woman, I still can't say nothing bad about her other than the fact that we had a difference on religion. She wanted someone who was a Muslim who shared those values. And I was like a heathen. I had to stay home on Sundays and watch the football game.

How do we transform loss? ... Time's healing balm is essentially a hoax.

I think of dying every day... At a certain age, you should be prepared to go at any time.

I try to explore, in terms of the life I know best, those things which are common to all cultures.

Anything you want to know, you ask the characters.

My plays are ultimately about love, honor, duty, betrayal.

Part of what our problem as blacks in America is that we don't claim that. Partly, you see, because of the linguistic environment in which we live.

I do - very specifically, I remember Bessie Smith; I used to collect 78 records that I would buy from the St Vincent de Paul store at five cents apiece, and I did this indiscriminately. I would just take whatever was there. And I listened to Patti Page and Walter Huston, 'September Song.'

Scripts were rather scarce in 1968. We did a lot of Amiri Baraka's plays, the agitprop stuff he was writing. It was at a time when black student organizations were active on the campuses, so we were invited to the colleges around Pittsburgh and Ohio, and even as far away as Jackson, Mississippi.

I don't write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but that's not why I write.