“I'm just not having a very good time and I don't have any reason to think it'll get anything but worse. I'm tired. I'm hurt. I'm sad. I feel used.”

“I have had an inordinate and painful concern for the audience in my writing career.”

“After I won the Pulitzer, there was this sense of, 'OK, that's enough for you. Now go away.' What I wanted was to keep writing, keep working. But no one would produce anything of mine they didn't think would be as big as ''night, Mother.'”

“People listen to music with cavemen ears: Is it a bird song or the call of a lion? The audience at a musical is dancing in their hearts.”

“When you fight something long enough, it becomes a center pole right in your life and you count on it to be there to fight with.”

“Friendship is full of dregs.”

“Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.”

“My cake is dough, but I'll in among the rest, Out of hope of all but my share of the feast.”