Richard Greenberg

I do think the past changes at a slower rate. It sits a little more still for its portrait.

I think I'm a writer, and it's my job. People in other professions are expected to do their jobs all the time. Why shouldn't I?

People talk about alienation in the city. Diners are a place where you feel comfortable, an extension of your house.

I started in the era when Hollywood reveled in being the most cost-inefficient industry on the planet. They used to commission a hundred scripts for every one they made.

I like the Mets. I'm interested in the Mets.

I think I can be an intimidating energy in the room. I think I come in with an aura of wanting results because as the playwright, I know how it goes, and there's the thought, 'Why can't they catch up?'

My mother wanted me to be a writer. But she was a child of the Depression and never understood that she wasn't poor. So, you know, the idea of not having a job, it would creep through. But she tried very hard to be subtle about it.

When you're writing plays, it's possible to believe you don't have any real world skill. When you're adapting, it is really all about the mechanics, so you feel closer to, I don't know, an accountant or someone who has a body of information. It's not all about temperament.

Frankly, seeing my plays with an audience is something I do with gritted teeth; I find the experience very difficult. I love the moment when you have just the dress rehearsal, when no one's there; that's kind of the peak to me. When people start filing in, I like to file out.

You do think, if you have your druthers, 'I want to sort of be, not anonymous, but unknown'. But you don't have your druthers in life, do you?

I'm sort of anti-Aristotelian. I want to get an entire life onstage while conveying a sense of how time feels, how unstoppable it is, and how we don't really know what's going on because as we're trying to weave, it's weaving us.

For some reason, 1968 is a touchstone year for me. I think it was the first year I felt fully conscious.