“My old man tried to force on me a notion of what it was to be a 'man.' And it destroyed my dad.”

“My dad had a lot of bad luck. You could see his suffering, his terrible suffering, living a life that was disappointing and looking for another one.”

“My old man tried to force on me a notion of what it was to be a 'man.' And it destroyed my dad.”

“I feel like I've never had a home, you know? I feel related to the country, to this country, and yet I don't know exactly where I fit in... There's always this kind of nostalgia for a place, a place where you can reckon with yourself.”

“It's funny, in a way the actor is a writer. It's not like the two things are so separate as to be like apples and oranges. The writer and the actor are one.”

“The funny thing about having all this so-called success is that behind it is a certain horrible emptiness.”

“On stage, you're not limited at all because you're free in language: language is the source of the imagination. You can travel farther in language than you can in any film.”

“Sides are being divided now. It's very obvious. So if you're on the other side of the fence, you're suddenly anti-American. It's breeding fear of being on the wrong side.”

“In real life we don't know what's going to happen next. So how can you be that way on a stage? Being alive to the possibility of not knowing exactly how everything is going to happen next - if you can find places to have that happen onstage, it can resonate with an experience of living.”

“I'm not a big fan of anniversaries.”

“When you write a play, you work out like a musician on a piece of music. You find all the rhythms and the melody and the harmonies and take them as they come.”