I always thought superintelligence was a long way off and we could worry about it later, and the problem for now is just to make these more intelligent. I wish I'd thought sooner about what was going to happen.

Japanese traditional architecture is created based on these conditions. This is the reason you have a very high degree of connection between the outside and inside in architecture.

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people, and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.

I had followed the experts and put the money I had in television.

Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.

No. Although I have to qualify that. Though he was, by jazz standards, a very square composer, he was, by musical theater standards, a not square composer, and he taught me to be less square. I tend to be square.

You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, You're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. I'm the witch. You're the world.

But that’s part of the process, isn’t it? Something might not fit in the show. Musicals are — particularly musicals — plays also, but musicals particularly are… the last collaborator is your audience, and so you’ve got to wait ’til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration. And when the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you’ve written. Things that seem to work well — work in a sense of carry the story forward and be integral to the piece — suddenly become a little less relevant or a little less functional or a little overlong or a little overweight or a little whatever. And so you start reshaping from an audience.

I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it.

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.