“You should respect death and respect the dead, not out of fear, but because it's the proper human thing to do.”

“There's no need to fear the oblivion after we're gone if we never cared about the oblivion that came before we were born. Cheer up. Death obsessing is for boozy existentialists and bad poets.”

“Scatter where you want, bury where you wish, but do something with intent, don't be passive and follow what commissioned pre-need salesmen consider the norm. Use your imagination, balance your own spiritual beliefs with guesswork, but do the work: accept that we know nothing about death, take a leap of faith, and have the courage to act anyway.”

“We worship entertainment as much as technology, and there's nothing less entertaining than grief. That's why God invented lorazepam, and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and vodka and television - which in my experience work best in combination, with a pizza.”

“I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.”

“I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.”

“(Words) deserve respect. Get the right ones in the right order, and you can nudge the world a little.”