Quotes from Stephen Karam

I don't know how to produce work if it's not something that's deeply scaring me or troubling me.

I definitely prefer to write under my own volition and see what happens.

'Sons of the Prophet' is a dark comedy about human suffering. The play explores the particularly messy portions of life - the times where you find yourself coping with multiple life issues, and before any of them can be resolved, two more show up on your plate. We've all been there, I'd wager.

Writing a play to get to Broadway and have a national tour is a sure way to write a terrible, terrible play.

I was the worst-dressed person in Scranton. I was a total nerd. Obviously, I got picked on, but I was also able to find my own cluster of friends, and I think when that happens, you get by just fine.

Janet Carroll and Robert Pine, Chris Pine's dad, were in my first play, and they were so astonishingly good, I felt it raised my game instantly.

That the best piece of art a person is capable of making is the one that only they could create.

So much of great American drama has been about a certain kind of dysfunctional family, and maybe my interests are in the kind of strange dysfunction that exists even among deeply functional families.

Because I didn't go to graduate school or have mentorship out of college, meeting other playwrights and developing those friendships as a result of being a 'grown up' playwright - that's become an essential community for me. My contemporaries are all my mentors whether they know it or not.

I know how much respect I have for people of all different faiths, but especially for my family, who are the most important people in my life, and who are still practicing, and deeply religious.

I'm still learning so much with every play I write. So I wrestle with word choice, rhythm in final drafts. I think you have to be ruthless.

When you're the artsy, weirdo, introverted outsider growing up, you don't fit into your community.

I lived in a basement duplex on 96th Street on the Upper West Side.

If you fail on your own terms, that's a pretty good way to go down.

To see professional actors do my work, to take it seriously - that was the thing that made me think playwriting could actually be what I do. It's not a profession that has some sort of clear career track, like, 'This is what you do to be a playwright.'

Everyone will always have ideas about how to make your work better. Everyone has advice about how to end your play differently. Start it differently. And it's not about right or wrong. At the end of the day, it's your baby, and you know what's best.

To be totally honest, I thought I would have a Broadway debut in the distant, distant future, maybe in my 60s or 70s when somebody revived one of my off-Broadway plays with a star.

In writing 'The Humans,' I obsessed over the financial district and the architecture.

I didn't quite fit in in any particular, specific way. I was a gay teenager who was into drama.

I was talking to so many teenagers for so long that I started to feel like, 'I have my own story I want to tell, and I need to do it soon.' So I started to store away pieces that eventually became 'Speech & Debate.' I felt this burning need to write it while I still had not only all of the ideas but the passion to do it.

Without a conscious effort, all of my plays have all featured gay characters. I'm proud of that.

In reality, life was arranged and human relations were complicated so utterly beyond all understanding that when one thought about it one felt uncanny and one's heart sank.

If there's ever a moment when I am an Anglophile, it's when I see so many theatres in this country that have what I would call federal funding.

My own journey as a writer has been the discovery of different theatrical voices. Chekhov was a revelation. Tennessee Williams was another one. We read 'The Glass Menagerie' in high school, and I still remember the cover.