The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel, Mississippi.

I did write a couple of original screenplays, but I'd rather write plays.

But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.

Then, when I was a senior in high school, I was kind of bereft and she put me in an acting class.

It's called Sisters of the Winter Madrigal. It was interesting for me to see it done after so many years; because I wrote it and I didn't realize what a rage I was in.

I love writing for the screen.

Somehow I got to be one of five or six actors that the directors would use as guinea pigs at this directing colloquium, where people pay to listen to and watch the directors direct.

I was just restless with being in school; so I went out to Los Angeles.

What I loved about the acting class was that you got to think all day long about a person that wasn't you, and figure out why they were sad and what they wanted, what they dreamed.

Then I went off to Southern Methodist University in Dallas. They had a really wonderful theatre department.

My fault now is making my plays too short.

I tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money.

The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel, Mississippi.

I just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

In movement class, you had to lie on the floor and get your alignment in to pass the class.

The most glorious thing about working in the collaborative art is when you have somebody like Susan Kingsley or Kathy Bates who are better than your play.

You can't just go in there and open your mouth until the cast and director feel comfortable with you.

Part of that is that New York has proved to be too much fun for me to live and work; I love New York so much.

Plays are so much more special if they've never ever had a production, but I think you can really work on a play and make it better with each production.

That was always my inclination, to start on a new play before the other one gets done, because at least you'll have something to go back to if that play gets trashed.

Some really good things kind of swing both ways and I like to see people that can swing really, really, really sad and horrible and terrible and really, really, really beautiful and funny.

My first few plays took place in the South and even The Lucky Spot was in the thirties but in Louisiana.

It's really interesting that whenever you do something that is so out of character, like having an emotional outburst, that you don't get in trouble.

I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, really in suburbia, so my mother was in community theatre plays.

The impetus behind going to graduate school was a year after graduating from college spent in Dallas working at the dog food factory and Bank America and not having met success in my chosen field, which at that point was being an actress.

I'm very into the first production of the show.

I get a little behind during Lent, but it comes out even at Christmas.

If you pray enough for things, I am proof that they can happen. I feel like a kid on Christmas day now, every day. It's something I have wanted for a long time and I am as happy as anyone to be here. It is great to be back at my first love.

When I was 12, all I wanted for Christmas was a trampoline or a four-wheeler. I ended up getting both presents for Christmas.

Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion.

Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.

Christmas albums are not something you do frequently.

Fantastic! Right in the middle of that long stretch between Christmas and Spring Break, your coats are getting dirty, everything's dark, dingy - what a great time for a movie!

But Tammy Faye calls me, and Ron Jeremy calls me, Erik Estrada sends me a Christmas card every year.

Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

There's been a concerted effort to steal Christmas.

I have a musical called Goodbye and Good Luck, based on a Grace Paley short story. I also have King Island Christmas, and there are 20 different productions of it this year.

I intend to keep writing Christmas songs. There's still a lot more about Christmas that can be captured and feel like old-time Christmas. A lot of the traditions haven't been explained in song.

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

Christmas... is not an external event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart.

Dad bought me a toy drum one Christmas, and I eventually destroyed it. I wanted a real drum and he bought me a snare drum. Dad continued to buy me one drum after the other.

To understand this Christmas record, you have to understand our ministry.

Christmas carols always brought tears to my eyes. I also cry at weddings. I should have cried at a couple of my own.

Please to put a nickel, please to put a dime. How petitions trickle in at Christmas time!

Chum was a British boy's weekly which, at the end of the year was bound into a single huge book; and the following Christmas parents bought it as Christmas presents for male children.

Godot is whatever it is in life that you are waiting for: 'I'm waiting to win the lottery. I'm waiting to fall in love'. For me, as a child, it was Christmas. At least that eventually came.