I started acting when I was in high school, started writing when I got to New York in 1975.

I write for an audience that likes what I like, reads what I read, thinks about the things I think about. In many ways, this puts me in opposition to the people who go to the theater generally.

I was definitely surprised when Talk Radio took off as a play. As a film it has become somewhere between a popular thing and a cult thing.

If all I ever wrote about was inner city freaks, I think it would be dishonest.

For a long time, my shows were about people walking out or about getting my gigs canceled or having the presenter not wanting to pay me.

It's a mental fake-out to myself. I make believe I'm making a new show so I forget the material I was working on and make up some fresh material.

I don't know anybody who does what I do. I'm very underground.

If you say city to people, people have no problem thinking of the city as rife with problematic, screwed-up people, but if you say suburbs - and I'm not the first person to say this, it's been said over and over again in literature - there's a sense of normalcy.

I'm always surprised by things that happen to my work.

I write my plays to create an excuse for full-tilt acting and performing.

I'm not hip, I'm not cool, I'm not glib.

I know that I'm inadequate, but I never thought that at seventeen. I thought I was doing the best I could. I thought I was being idealistic.

I do write about people who are complex and are striving with something and can't quite get past their own stuff, which would be a proxy for myself because that's what the deal is with me.

I write, but I also act.

As soon as the dirt is hitting the casket, it'll all be forgotten.

I'm very underground.

The world intrudes in my brain daily. Since my brain is dripping with all kinds of stuff that's out there in the world, that I can't seem to be able to shut out, it has to end up being in my work as well.

I'm not a light-hearted person, so I can't think light-hearted at work.

I provide the bricks and mortar with the words and situations - the director and the actors and the designers build the house.

Ensemble is hard to do. It's like 3-D chess.

Well, the real Eric Bogosian is pretty self-conscious of himself.

If we all knew we were going to live to be 150 years old, we'd all approach our lives very differently.

I started acting when I was in high school, started writing when I got to New York in 1975.

I love playing other people's work. I love acting.

As soon as the dirt is hitting the casket itll all be forgotten.

It was always part of the plan to move into acting.

Be where the acting is. I live in Houston. Dallas is 4 1/2 hours away. I let them know there's no difference.

My mother keeps things in perspective for me. She makes me realize that the acting I do and love is no more important than what one of my brothers does-he works in a shoe repair shop. If my career ever tapers off, I'll go to college.

In Hungary, acting is a career for which one fits himself as earnestly as one studies for a degree in medicine, law, or philosophy.

I think acting is about forgetting yourself in order to give the best of yourself. It's passing through you more than you're creating it. You're not the flower, but the vase which holds the flower.

In LA, too many people want to go the quickest route from A to B. Method acting offers them that.

I don't see it as a form of healing, because if you have wounds that are bleeding I don't think acting will ever get them to stop. But I find acting is a form of illumination.

Maybe I can't act, but I know the gimmicks. I studied acting all my life and know what's good for me.

I know that if I'd had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn't have got anywhere. You don't take exams for acting, you take your courage.

I'm not acting, but I am acting.

I've done a lot of acting. I'm not saying I'm the greatest, but I'd love to act, I'd love to sing.

I had a bonding problem when I went off and boxed for five years. I was over in Europe and Asia fighting because I wanted to do something different; I was tired of acting. But the thing is, when I was done doing that, I couldn't get a job.

Acting for me is not that quid pro quo.

If you're acting, then there's a prescribed way to behave; whereas in life there's no prescribed way. So acting feels like a comfortable way to get through the day.

When I was a kid, the idea of why I wanted acting to be the thing I do for the rest of my life was different. It was, Oh yeah, I'll get girls and be famous.

And then, I suppose, there's also a cinematic reality on top of that. Because it was extremely difficult to keep tabs on, it was quite confusing acting that.

I read. It's also nice for me to get involved in schoolwork, which is a totally different world than acting. It makes me feel like I am doing things that normal people are doing at my age.

It's a living, breathing thing, acting.

A few nights ago I went to a Hollywood screening of a small independent film made by Sally Kirkland, an old friend of mine who also did terrific job acting in it. There were other actors in it and they were all terrific.

Plastic surgery and breast implants are fine for people who want that, if it makes them feel better about who they are. But, it makes these people, actors especially, fantasy figures for a fantasy world. Acting is about being real being honest.

I don't see my dancing or acting as two separate things. I don't define them separately, so I can't say one has helped the other, It's all the same thing. More than anything I love being on stage and performing.

In any case, his judgment and set of values, acting alone or through his assistants, determine not only what is gold and what is dross but the design of the history which he creates out of the metal. The historian decides what is significant, and what is not.

It always surprised me that I was getting acting work.

Acting doesn't bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.