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What I think is important about essayists - about the essay, as opposed to a lot of personal writing that kind of finds its way into public view - is that the material really has to be presented in a processed way.

I think a performer should do his work and then shut up.

I love essays, but they're not always the best way to communicate to a larger audience.

When you're a performer, of course you want an audience, but it's very, very different from courting fame.

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.

I don't really write for an audience. I just write what the subject seems to me to require.

A prose writer never sees a reader walk out of a book; for a playwright, it's another matter. An audience is an invaluable education. In my experience, theatre artists don't know what they've made until they've made it.

The point of essays is the point of writing anything. It's not to tell people what they already think or to give them more of what they already believe; it's to challenge people, and it's to suggest alternate ways of thinking about things.

For a writer, they say write what you know. As a performer, you find it in yourself, in your heart. You relate to the character. You try to live it, try to have it be real for you.