“Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.”

“No one wanted me to be a conscientious objector. My parents certainly didn't want it. My teacher and mentor, Joe Brearley, didn't want it. My friends didn't want it. I was alone.”

“I mean, don't forget the earth's about five thousand million years old, at least. Who can afford to live in the past?”

“I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.”

“I don't intend to simply go away and write my plays and be a good boy. I intend to remain an independent and political intelligence in my own right.”

“All I'm saying is that there are many different kinds of political theatre and many plays I greatly admire: 'Antigone,' 'Mother Courage,' 'All My Sons.' But, if I tackle a political theme, I have t...”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”

“You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feela hunger and thirst. For six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been a whirlpool, swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of tho...”

“There is a rest that comes when you live out of your sound. Silence is no longer something to be avoided. It signifies a soul at rest.”

“All right, Nico relented. Maybe a little He managed to take off his aviator jacket and wad it into a pillow before he keeled over and began to snore.”

“Stand up for what is right even if it means standing alone.”

“Stand up for what is just against the unjust.”

“Many people see themselves as a rose, when all they are is just a prick.”