I am interested in the gap between what people say and what they think - the undiscovered world of people's lives. Lives of quiet desperation.
The modern minds in each generation are the critics who preserve us from a petrifying world, who will not leave us to walk undisturbed in the ways of our fathers.
I don't think any book of mine will ever come as close to pure fantasy as 'A Heaven of Others.' I'll never again set a book in a world or after-world in which it's impossible to buy a cup of coffee or take an undisturbed afternoon nap.
That's the job of art: to undo the logic of the world.
These deserters were our undoing. I shall have a good deal more to say about them before I finally lay down my pen, and I shall not hesitate to call them by their true name, the name with which they will be for ever branded before all the nations of the world.
I left the world of jail with plenty of relief but, more than anything, with a sense of unease that I still can't quite shake.
Let me just try to give you sort of the intuitive one here on the stimulus funds. If you have a two-person economy - let's imagine we have two farms, and that's the whole world, just two farms. If one of those farmers gets unemployment benefits, who do you think pays for him? Am I going way over your heads today?
There's a reason that there are oodles of young Aussies, Germans, Japanese, even Chinese backpackers traipsing around the world. They are unencumbered by debilitating student loans. No such luck for the American Theater Arts major with $120,000 in loans.
The boom for luxury goods is unending. There are people who never have to worry about whether they can afford something they like. In one part of the world or another there will always be someone with money to spend on luxury.
I want to state unequivocally for the world, as well as for the markets, as well as for the American people: I have no doubt that we will not lose the full faith and credit of the United States.
I am always looking for ideas, whether it is in art on the street or in my world travels. It comes to me randomly and unexpectedly.
We will never fully explain the world by appealing to something outside it that must simply be accepted on faith, be it an unexplained God or an unexplained set of mathematical laws.
I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.
I know the world isn't fair, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?
Inequality is not the same thing as unfairness; and, to my mind, it is the latter that has incited so much political turmoil in the rich world today.
On stage, I find anger at the unfairness of the world easily.
In Germany it is good if as many people as possible join initiatives and peaceful demonstrations against the rule of the financial markets. Worshipping the unfettered freedom of global markets has brought the world to the brink of ruin. We now need social and ecological rules for the market economy.
I always write to understand my place in the world. I can see myself and my life unfold on the page, and I can understand my strengths, my weaknesses - I can see where I need to step up a bit.
I can call up a friend and have them meet me for a drink in 20 minutes, and suddenly, the night unfolds into this glorious, uniquely New York situation. I wouldn't give it up for the world.
I've learned you can make a mistake and the whole world doesn't end. I had to learn to allow myself to make a mistake without becoming defensive and unforgiving.
