"People find it easy to justify their frustration in the struggle to manipulate others, but find it hard to justify the struggle for their own growth."

"Sometimes when you feed on another’s word you must eat it like a banana – you peel it first."

"Technology has not advanced because people are starved for instruments to make a better civilization, but because they are starved for entertainment – technology is still mostly a toy factory for grown-ups."

"People have learned to escape reality very well but too often lose their way back."

"The more fortunate people among us would surely think we are civilized, but the less fortunate among us are a reminder that we’re not."

"Just as feelings grow out of ignorance, intuition should grow out of knowledge."

"Americans are simple people with simple interests – The only time they sincerely ask “why” about anything is when they don’t receive their paychecks."

"All things – great, small, good, bad, friend, enemy—should be a lesson, not an obsession."

"There can be danger in stretching the body if it’s not done properly. The same is true with the imagination and the chemistry which may give the imagination elasticity, but the soul gives a direction."

"In order to stay clear of pain, we must know and know why we feel best while having pain."

"Defensive thinkers best defend themselves from knowing who they are."

"Rather than studying the laws of cause and effect, people spend their lives being the effect and running from the cause."

"When making a commitment, make it not to someone, but of someone to yourself."

"One tool that is used most and has the greatest misuse of power is looks, and another tool that is used least and has the least desire for power is wisdom."

"One solution to one problem makes two problems."

"There are opposing forces in all living things. My work reflects this and stirs up a contrast of emotions in the viewer... perception versus annoyance. To the viewer who has reached that level of awareness, my work is no longer abstract, but very real."

"Can someone eat the fruit that comes from the tree of action that grows from the seeds of your mind?"

"The bird of truth would not be able to fly if it weren't for the air of lies we breathe."

"While traveling our separated roads through life, we are also either road signs or potholes on the roads of others."

"If you seek just a little truth, as most, you should not ignore abstract forms, the basis from which all short-lived experiences we call reality springs."

"When I was a high school government teacher, I used to remind my students that TO VOTE IS TO HAVE A VOICE. That simple idea is the cornerstone of our democratic process. During my eight years as secretary of state, nothing has made me more proud than the fact that we have set all-time records for both voter registration and voting. … As Election Day approaches, I urge every Iowan to use your voice, to make yourself heard as a citizen of the United States and a proud Iowan. Please vote today. You truly hold the key to leading this state forward."

"You need great precision in the way the words are delivered, and in the way the emotions are understood. If you start leaving out words or putting them in or coming in on the wrong bit it spoils it. But Albee understands that when you are playing a play it's very important that it's naturalistic on the surface. That it is like jazz. If the actors are playing well together, you have the structure, you have the beats, but you maybe play it a bit differently every night."

"I remember two playwrights who affected me deeply, for their wit especially: Edward Albee and Samuel Beckett. I found their sense of absurdity comforting."

"It is three and a half hours long, four characters wide and a cesspool deep."

"The gods too are fond of a joke."

"The only time I'll get good reviews is if I kill myself."

"Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve."

"Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage."

"I created myself, and I'll attack anybody I feel like."

"If Attila the Hun were alive today, he'd be a drama critic."

"I survive almost any onslaught with a shrug, which must appear as arrogance, but really isn't because I'm not an arrogant person. When you write a play, you make a set of assumptions — that you have something to say, that you know how to say it, that it's worth saying, and that maybe someone will come along for the ride. That's all. And then you go about your business, assuming you'd be the first to know if your talent has collapsed. I don't think I've been a commercial playwright ever. By some curious mischance, a couple of my plays managed to hit an area where commercial success was feasible. But it's wrong to think I'm a commercial playwright who has somehow ceased his proper function. I have always been the same thing — which is not a commercial playwright. I'm not after the brass ring. I very seldom get it anyway, and then it's accidental when I do. … So I write those things that interest me."

"I have been both overpraised and underpraised. I assume by the time I finish writing — and I plan to go on writing until I'm 90 or gaga — it will all equal itself out... You can't involve yourself with the vicissitudes of fashion or critical response. I'm fairly confident that my work is going to be around for a while. I am pleased and reassured by the fact that a lot of younger playwrights seem to pay me some attention and gain some nourishment from what I do."

"I've noticed that there is not necessarily a great relationship between what the majority of critics have to say and what is actually true. Some of them are so busy trying to mold the public taste according to the limits of their perceptions, and others are so busy reflecting what they consider to be the public taste — that view limited again by their perception. You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid — but most people don't take the trouble."

"Q: Do you find quite a difference between the audience at large and the critics as a group? A: Well, one is a group of human beings, one is not."

"American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties."

"Primarily the characters must seem interested in what they, themselves, are doing and saying. While the lines must not read metronome-exact, I feel that a certain set rhythm will come about, quite of itself. No one rushes in on the end of anyone else's speech; no one waits too long. I have indicated, quite precisely, within the speeches of the Long-Winded Lady, by means of commas, periods, semi-colons, colons, dashes and dots (as well as parenthetical stage directions) the speech rhythms. Please observe them carefully, for they were not thrown in, like herbs on a salad, to be mixed about. I have underlined words I want stressed. I have capitalized for loudness, and used exclamation points for emphasis. There are one or two seeming questions that I have left the question mark off of. This was done o purpose, as an out-loud reading will make self-evident."

"What people really want in the theater is fantasy involvement and not reality involvement."

"Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, [but] every character is an extension of the author's own personality."

"A play is fiction — and fiction is fact distilled into truth."

"Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite."

"I'm not suggesting that the play is without fault; all of my plays are imperfect, I'm rather happy to say — it leaves me something to do."

"One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand."

"You gotta have a swine to show you where the truffles are."

"I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humour."

"What I wanted to get at is the value difference between pornographic playing-cards when you're a kid, and pornographic playing-cards when you're older. It's that when you're a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you're older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy."