I'm Not Religious, But I

I Don't Want To Name Names Because They'd Be Mad At Me If I Did, But People Who Are Significant Novelists Can't Get Published By Real Publishers At This Point, Or Have To Go Through Two Years Of Trying After Writing A Novel That's Taken Them Five Or Six Years And Simply Can't Get The Thing In Print. Or It Gets In Print And It Doesn't Get Reviewed In The New York Times Book Review And Disappears Without A Trace. I Mean, It's Terrifying. I Don't Know How Anybody Can Stand It. It's Such An Enormous Amount Of Work And The Economics Of It Are Really Quite Brutal.

Nothing's Lost Forever.

A Play Should Have Barely Been Rescued From The Mess It Might Just As Easily Have Been.

I Think That Everybody Who Writes Believes That Their Work Has Some Kind Of Use-value, For Someone, That There's Some Need For It, Some Person Or Group Of People Out There Has Demanded That These Words Come Into Being. I Think That You Do The Work For These People. You Hope That You Can Make A Living At It. Whatever Your Ambitions And Needs Are In That Regard, Your Only Real Requirement Is To Try And Dig As Deeply As You Can Dig To Make Sense Of The Meaning Of Human Existence.

Plays Can Outlast Even The Opinions Of The Chief Film Critic Of The New York Times And That Reviews, Although They Feel Devastating In The Immediate Moment, Are Not Remotely As Significant As The Significance You Endow Them With On The Day That They Appear.