"Accuracy is paramount in every detail of a work of history. Here's my rule: Ask yourself, 'Did this thing happen?' If the answer is yes, then it's historical. Then ask, 'Did this thing happen precisely this way?' If the answer is yes, then it's history if the answer is no, not precisely this way, then it's historical drama."

"You have to have hope. It's irresponsible to give false hope, which I think a lot of playwrights are guilty of. But I also think it's irresponsible to simply be a nihilist, which quite a lot of playwrights, especially playwrights younger than me, have become guilty of."

"There's a kind of a fundamental irresponsibility in playwriting, and the strength of playwriting comes from that irresponsibility."

"I write plays and movies, I live and work at the borderline between word and image just as any cartoonist or illustrator does. I'm not a pure writer. I use words as the score for kinetic imagistic representations."

"Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed."

"A country like Belgium, or socialist countries in central Europe spend more money on art education than the United States, which is a really puzzling thought."

"Every artist writes his own autobiography."

"Recessions are hard on people, but they are not hard on art."