Quotes

When it's 100 in New York, it's 72 in Los Angeles. When it's 20 in New York, it's 72 in Los Angeles. However, there are six million interesting people in New York - and 72 in Los Angeles.

On writing 1991's "The Marrying Man": "With a play, I have only two people to please - myself and the director. With this movie, it was 19 executives, a director who'd never done anything but animation before, and two stars who would tell you what lines they'd say and what lines they wouldn't say."

On Hollywood: "Everyone in Hollywood is looking for a blockbuster. They tell you their last movie 'only grossed $70 million,' as if that were some kind of crime."

I don't like writing for comedians. I like writing for actors. The best comedians are the best actors.

[on Herbert Ross] I think Herb Ross is the best director I've worked with in films. The others just don't understand my material as well.

On the 2009 closing of his Broadway revival, "Brighton Beach Memoirs" one week after it premiered: I'm still dumbfounded. After all these years, I still don't get how Broadway works, or what to make of our culture.

I didn't think of a thing called money. If I had a nickel, I would run in the street and say, 'I got a nickel! I got a nickel! I'm rich! I'm rich!' As a kid, I always thought, I'll never forget all these things, but you do. I managed to forget all of it. Some people spend their lives remembering, and that's what I thought I would do. But it doesn't last.

When an audience laughed, I felt fulfilled. It was a sign of approval, of being accepted. Coming from a childhood where laughter in the house meant security, but was seldom heard as often a door slamming every time my father took another year's from us, the laughter that came my way in the theater was nourishment.

[on choosing playwriting as a career] For a man to be his own master, to depend on no one else, to make life conform to his own visions rather than to follow the blueprints of others, playwriting is the perfect occupation. To sit in a room alone for six or seven or ten hours, sharing the time with characters that you created, is sheer heaven. And if not heaven, it's at least an escape from hell.