“There might be a dragon with five legs in my house, but no one has ever seen it.”

“I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.”

“Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents' heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!- Abigail”

“I cannot sleep for dreaming; I cannot dream but I wake and walk about the house as though I'd find you comin' through the door.”

“The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.”

“He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.”

“I am amazed all over again by how magnified this project's importance has become, far beyond its being a play or an artwork. It is now a test of some kind; but of what, precisely? The incommunicability of the Chinese? If I can't claim to know my actors, I know them as well or as little as I would an American cast. I can no longer call up the notion of Chinese mysteriousness.”