In theater, the playwright is the boss, period. The decisions will go through him or her. In movies, the writer is pretty far down on the list.

If you feel like you're in control of everything, and then things aren't going well, you feel like you're failing.

I don't know what it says about me that I have a greater affinity with the damaged. Probably nothing good.

After the success of 'August,' there were people saying I should change my life. And maybe I should have bought a yacht and traveled the world instead of returning to Steppenwolf to act in and write plays. But I'm from the Midwest, and that's what we do: We go back to work.

I never know what the hell I'm writing about, I never know what the next thing I'm writing about is, I never have a plan.

I'm aware that a film is different than a play, and that a film isn't going to be the filmed record of the play. It's its own separate entity, and I've come to peace with that.

Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed.

Women are beautiful when they're young, and not after. Men can still preserve their sex appeal well into old age.... Some men can maintain, if they embrace it ... cragginess, weary masculinity. Women just get old and fat and wrinkly.