“Our function as playwrights to some extent is to make audiences see with their ears, because films make us see with our eyes much better.”
“Rehearsing a play is making the word flesh. Publishing a play is reversing the process.”
“The rhetoric is the key to the character. It's the verbal music of the piece.”
“Watching Italian opera, all those male sopranos screeching, stupid fat couples rolling their eyes about. That's not love, it's just rubbish.”
“I really believe that studying organization, even in the form of studying detective story organization, is very, very valuable for a playwright, a budding playwright.”
“It's an extraordinary thing about Mozart is that you never tire of him... he never bores me, and he doesn't... not only bore me, that's too strong a word.”
“I discover what I mean as I write. That can be both terrifically exciting and very dangerous, because when you look at your words later, you wonder, 'Did I really mean that, or am I just making verbal patterns?'”
“You never quite know what's going to strike your imagination, or something that won't going to leave you alone, not going to leave alone, and this was one for me.”
“And in fact, I think one of the best guides to telling you who you are, and I think children use it all the time for this purpose, is fantasy.”
“But the first published thing I did was a detective story, detective novel, and I did that on my own.”