Ellen McLaughlin

“I'm an actor and a playwright, and I don't earn much.”

“I became frustrated early on as a playwright by a kind of smug smallness in modern drama. There was a lack of what I now understand as courage in the work of others as well as in my own work, and I found I was mildly amused or interested by such plays but not deeply engaged or enlightened.”

“The sensation of flying is incredible, and it's such a miraculous notion to go into the air and see the world without delineation.”

“I just realized at some point that I was hopelessly in love with the theater. I fought it for a long time because I thought theater was for, you know, insufferable actors.”

“Not just my parents, but teachers, friends, mentors - a host of people are to be thanked for any success I have had, and a whole lot of just plain luck.”

“I go to the theater because I need help dealing with my life; I want to see the greatest questions addressed. I need to see actors grappling with things that matter.”

“In 'Angels in America,' I got to fulfill a lifelong dream. I was in the air eight nights a week for two years, and I just loved it.”

“When I was in high school, I was going to be a painter because I had a facility for painting. I could do it, but I didn't have anything to say in that medium.”

“I'm very comfortable in the air. And if you're really in love with flight, you're in love to a certain extent with being outside of the body, not grounded. The problem is, if you're not in your body, you can't actually feel anything particularly authentically.”

“I don't do my best work while I'm in therapy. I'm too onto myself immediately seeing meanings in things and more likely to censor myself. I'd rather find images I don't understand. That's what generates the work.”

“One of the reasons I admire David Lindsay-Abaire's work is that he, like the Greeks I've spent so much of my professional life contemplating, is not afraid of taking on the big stuff - huge, human, moral issues - what do we owe to those we love?”

“The more you head into the maelstrom, the more vulnerable you are, of course. But it's what you owe to whatever gift you have.”