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My most important relationships were with my father and grandmother.

James Brown became my father. He would talk to me the way a father talked to a son. He became the father I never had.

What my first son James did was allow me to care for something in this world when I couldn't care for myself. James saved my life.

Relationships with parents, grandparents, friends, and siblings were important to me when I was young and have remained so throughout my life. Our relationships with other people both shape and reflect who we are. These relationships are infinitely fascinating to explore!

What I am most grateful for is that neither of my fathers pushed the relationship; they just let things develop and didn't impose anything on me. They were both just there, emanating stability in a very unstable situation.

My grandfather died before I was born, so I never had the chance to speak with him about his father. But I learned about him from books.

The most important influence in my childhood was my father.

My father I liked, but it was only after his death that I got to know him by writing the play.

I'm estranged from my father and that relationship, as a young man, is incredibly important. It's probably responsible for the man I've become.

I missed my father so much when he died that writing about his life and mine was a way of bringing him back to life and getting me to sort of understand more about him and what made him the father, the husband and the man that he was, and how that made me the man, husband and father that I am.