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" For me, playwriting is sharing my experiences, telling my stories. "

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" I do see myself as an old-fashioned storyteller. But there's always a touch of the political in my plays. "

" I always thought of my mother as a warrior woman, and I became interested in pursuing stories of women who invent lives in order to survive. "

" I am a Tony voter; it is an honor that I take seriously. Each season, I enter the process with a degree of enthusiasm and optimism, which dissipates as I slowly plow through show after show. "

" I was repeatedly told that there isn't an African American woman who can open a show on Broadway. I said, 'Well, how do we know? How do we know if we don't do it?' I said, 'I think you're wrong.' "

" Growing up in New York City, I'd flirted with the idea of driving, but between the subway and the sidewalks, I'd never needed to learn. "

" I love my people's history. I feel a huge responsibility to tell the stories of my past and my ancestors' past. "

" I can't quite remember the exact moment when I became obsessed with writing a play about the seemingly endless war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but I knew that I wanted to somehow tell the stories of the Congolese women caught in the cross-fire. "

" The presence of a bed changes the way people interact. "

" I always describe race as the final taboo in American theatre. There's a real reluctance to have that conversation in an open, honest way on the stage. "

" When you begin a play, you're going to have to spend a lot of time with those characters, so those characters are going to have to be rich enough that you want to take a very long journey with them. That's how I begin thinking about what I want to write about and who I want to write about. "

" The more you go to a theatre and the more you hear stories you aren't necessarily familiar with, the more open you become. "

" It's very easy, when we're reading those articles on the 20th page of 'The New York Times,' to distance ourselves and say, 'It's someone else.' "

" Here's the dilemma of the modern age: There used to be actions that workers could take, in the form of a strike. But now, that's being pre-empted by lockouts. They don't even have that leverage to protect their jobs. "

" There were not a lot of women in the theater department - it was really run by men, and so the message was that women can be onstage, but women can't really be backstage. "

" Before I start, I create a set list that I listen to while I'm writing. For 'Intimate Apparel,' I loaded Erik Satie, Scott Joplin, klezmer music, and the American jazz performer and composer Reginald Robinson. "

" I wrote 'Ruined' and 'Vera Stark' at the same time. That's just how my brain functions - when I'm dwelling someplace very heavy, I need a release. "

" Winning the second Pulitzer firmly places me in conversation with this culture. "

" What I often do when I'm writing, if I can't find that story, I go out and I hunt for it. "

" Like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, I try to balance reality with how we'd like the world to be. "

" The theatre should reflect America as it's lived in today. And that is a multicultural America. "

" I love Twitter. "

" It remains an incredible struggle for women in theater, and, in particular, playwrights and directors, to get their work seen and to not only get seen, but to get it to Broadway. "

" Saying, 'I'm going to create jobs' is great, but before you create jobs, something has to be offered to alleviate some of the suffering now. "

" I would like there to be gender equity. I would like the Broadway season to reflect sort of the demographic of the country. "

" Who wants to see the same play again? I certainly don't want to write the same play again and again. "

" In senior year at college, Paula Vogel was my playwriting teacher; she is the first person to introduce me to the notion that a woman could actually forge a career in the theatre. Up until then, the possibility seemed remote and inaccessible, as I had very few role models who directly touched my life. "

" I'm interested in people who are dwelling outside the mainstream. And very often, those people happen to be woman of color. "

" I wonder: Would there be a black president if people hadn't already begun imagining, through film and television, that a black man is president? It's self-actualization. "

" I'm a contemporary playwright in a postmodern world. "

" I teach at Columbia, and I'm always looking for books I can lose myself in during the 45 minutes I'm on the train. "