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" The act of saying what you do helps shape you as an artist. "

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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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I try to be led by my curiosity. "

" It's very important for me to have dialogues across racial lines. "

" In the business of war, the role of women is really to maintain normalcy and ensure that there is cultural continuity. "

" It's much easier to conjure characters strictly from your imagination than to have to think about whether you're representing people in a truthful way. "

" It is such a joy to join a legacy of amazing female playwrights who have managed to break through the glass ceiling and reinvigorate the Broadway stage by bringing a fresh and necessary perspective. "

" I remain committed to telling the stories of women of the African diaspora, particularly those stories that don't often find their way into the mainstream media. "

" 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. "

" All of my plays are about people who have been marginalized... erased from the public record. "

" Broadway is a closed ecosystem. "

" I think that human beings were incredibly resilient; otherwise, we wouldn't keep going. "

" I think of myself as a healing artist. "

" If you're looking at the people who head the institutions, there are very few African Americans or people of colour. I'm talking about the major theatres that position themselves as serving all audiences. What you find is, by and large, people who are shaping what we see, and the people who are the tastemakers are white. "

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

" By and large, the theatre establishment is run by a white majority. "

" There was no way I was going to write about Africa and not include the triumphant continuity of life that had also been part of my experience there. It's not just war and famine all the time. "

" The people sometimes who are closest to us are the ones who bear the brunt of our frustration. "

" I find my characters and stories in many varied places; sometimes they pop out of newspaper articles, obscure historical texts, lively dinner party conversations and some even crawl out of the dusty remote recesses of my imagination. "

" There's never any ebb in human misery. "

" 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. "

" Replace judgment with curiosity. "

" African American women in particular have incredible buying power. Statistically, we go to the movies more than anyone. We have made Tyler Perry's career. His films open with $25 million almost consistently. "

" A lot of the factories that had been the bedrock of many small cities were being shut down, which led me to investigate what I'm calling the 'de-industrial revolution.' "

" Each play I write has its own unique origin story. "

" I like to go into a space, listen, absorb, and then interpret. "

" I'm a schizophrenic writer. "