I've been trying to figure out for at least the last 10 years how to force myself into something more risky.

One does not devote one's life in art to shock an audience.

I realized that I had to be honest about where I was, where I was coming from, and what I was trying to do.

I'm there to make a kind of theatrical music that is desperately missing in my life. And if other people don't like it, I'm very unhappy, but I can't do anything about that.

My play is the ultimate expression of my feeling of the twilight of Western civilization.

If I wasn't in the theater, I would be a hermit.

So I decided to start writing plays, and went to Yale.

Now, when I started my theater, the modus operandi was having the actors stare right into the audience.

I acted in junior high in the junior high school group, and then when I got into senior high I was, you know, the main actor of the senior high school.

It's true, I don't like the real world.

You know, actually, I went to Yale because I wanted to stay out of the army.

Which implies that the real issue in art is the audience's response. Now I claim that when I make things, I don't care about the audience's response, I'm making them for myself. But I'm making them for myself as audience, because I want to wake myself up.

I was enchanted by the escape into that meticulous world that seemed real yet not... well, it seemed not real, but very detailed and meticulous, bizarre.

As I told you, from the time I was fifteen, I thought the theater was too much involved with actors trying to make the audience love them, being over emotional.

I've been trying to figure out for at least the last 10 years how to force myself into something more risky.

From that time through the time I was a New Dramatist, when I was something like twenty-two, I saw absolutely everything in New York. Absolutely everything.

What really happened was one day I decided to write a new kind of play.

All the dialogue on tape, and we'd play the tape in performance. Then I thought it'd be interesting if the actor's repeated what they heard on the tape, but at a slower speed, so we'd get a web of language.

There is no work of art that has ever been made that is absolutely truthful about life.

Because even at the age of fifteen, I used to go see all the Broadway shows and feel that they were sentimental, that they were pandering to the audience and trying to manipulate the audience. I had no use for practically any of the shows that were hits.

Quite the opposite. I might fall on my face, but I feel born again.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

If you want something that's going to provide you with a lot of challenges and a variety of different things to do, then you really can't beat a place like the Air Force. I don't mean this to sound like a recruiting pitch. But it's been a lot of fun.

We need to begin an all-out diplomatic offensive on Darfur in order to prepare the way for a peacekeeping force that can ensure protection for the people of Darfur.

The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such. All leaders whose fitness is questioned are clearly lacking in force.

Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.

All that a good government aims at... is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities.

It is the tendency of the social burdens to crush out the middle class, and to force society into an organization of only two classes, one at each social extreme.

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.

We need a strong police force - the Interior Ministry of the Republic of Chechnya. We have to get rid of the traitors who have managed to penetrate into the law-enforcement department.

From the long range point of view, I do not know of anything we can do more important than to make some contribution to the preservation of religion as a vital force in America.

The increase of territory and power of empires by force of arms has been the policy of all great powers, and it has always been possible to get the approval of their state religion.

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.

The dedication of the United States Air Force, Special Forces, and others involved in the mission to tracking down terrorists can not be matched. We express our gratitude to these men and women who defend the freedom America represents.

My mom and dad met at UCLA when he as a captain in the Air Force and she was in her junior year.

We believe, in fact, that the one act of respect has little force unless matched by the other - in balance with it... The acting out of that dual respect I would name as precisely the source of our power.

Our little force will march on tomorrow or the day after.

There are not as many women who support the national defense budget now as men. I really think there is a gender gap in the support for the large expenditures that are necessary to modernize the force.

We believe the use of force against Iraq, especially with reference to previous resolutions of the UN Security Council, has no grounds, including legal grounds.

If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.

It's an old adage that the way to be safe is never to be secure... Each one of us requires the spur of insecurity to force us to do our best.

Indiscriminate firing by police on people is absolute barbarism. Instead of solving their problems, the government is trying to suppress the people by force.

We must not enable anyone to impose his personal view regarding religion on others by force, oppression, or pressure.

My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment.

It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven.

Through the wholesale destruction of the representatives of a class that from the beginning of history had been the directing and creative force in civilization, a process began which was almost mechanical.

It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.

That's why I ended up leaving school - because it required so much time, and it was such an excellent idea. I figured I would regret not going full force with this idea. It seemed we could make something of it.

What force is more potent than love?