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For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next time I write a play I will be revealed as someone who is no good at all.

My generation of playwrights have grown up writing for studio theatres, and so the task of writing for more than ten or so actors is a huge challenge. Logistically, it's like doing an enormous Sudoku. Making sure everyone is in the right place at the right time in the right order instantly sends me into a cold sweat.

I've always known that writing plays is very difficult, because I've written three or four that have never been produced.

As far as dramas are concerned, it's considered passe for playwrights to turn out anything the average person can understand.

I'm not a playwright; I'm a writer who loves theater.

I am very aware that playwrights, particularly good ones, have a intention for everything they write. Language and punctuation is used specifically, and most of the time actors can find wonderful clues about character in the rhythm and cadence of the language used.

No two dramatists think or write alike. Ten thousand playwrights can take the same premise, as they have done since Shakespeare, and not one play will resemble the other except in the premise. Your knowledge, your understanding of human nature, and your imagination will take care of that.

I think plays, like books, are endemic. They grow out of the soil of the writer and the place he's writing about. I think, you just can't move them about, you know.

Playwrights are the most gregarious writers - to get our work done, we need actors, directors, set designers.

It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience.