Quotes from Stephen Karam

The human condition is endlessly fascinating to me, and the existential horrors of life are what drive our imaginations and theater in general.

I think the best directors aren't afraid to ask questions.

'Columbinus' was four years of my life, collaborating with a lot of people and gathering lots of information.

To me, 'Glee' is totally fantastic.

Good actors can tell you more about your play than 1,000 hours alone at your desk.

With 'The Humans,' I've found that because it's related to very familiar forms - the family play and the thriller, almost a genre-collison play - some people want it to be one or the other. Either less dark and more of a family comedy or a full-fledged thriller with blood and ghosts jumping out of closets. Everyone's taste is different.

I was not exposed to a lot of culture. The shows we saw in high school, like 'Phantom of the Opera' and 'Miss Saigon,' were thrilling. But my love affair with theater started with seeing a production of 'Little Shop of Horrors' that my sister was in.

The best thing about being nominated in a category like best new play is realizing there were enough new plays to make a category.

I don't go into rehearsal for a production unless I've figured everything out.

Coming home for me isn't, like, one family dinner. It's about am I gonna see 50 relatives, or am I gonna see 85?

Sometimes you realize you don't give people in your hometown enough credit.

I like creating the illusion that suddenly I've just done five things at once.

In terms of smaller changes over time, I think good plays are like poems. Every syllable counts. So I wrestle with word choice, rhythm in final drafts.

I think 'Speech & Debate' surprised people because it's a play about teenagers that took the teenagers very seriously. They are very real. People wanted to see if they identified with one of the kids, that loneliness, that yearning for something bigger. That feeling of being stuck, it's very adolescent, but those kinds of feelings linger on.

I'm drawn to writers with skill sets I don't have.

I think it's scary to be alive, but also exhilarating and joyful.

I don't think I could write a good play if I was setting out to write about the death of the American middle class.

Under Todd Haimes' leadership, Roundabout created a black-box theater whose sole mission was to house premieres by writers who are just starting out and have zero name recognition.

I was sending off my plays almost like an 8-year-old would send letters to Santa Claus. So it was a bit of a miracle when the Blank Theatre Company actually called and selected a terrible little play that I wrote.

Until I have a family or a mortgage, I'm trying to keep my lifestyle simple and my apartment affordable so that I can continue to focus on theater. That's as good as it gets for me.

To be honest, it's more fun being the underdog.

I think being gay has resulted in gay characters standing front and center in all of my work.

The best work that I am able to do is when I am willing to write about questions I haven't quite figured out, or things I'm really wrestling with, things that keep me up at night.

'The Cherry Orchard' is a masterpiece, and there can never be too many adaptations.