'The Miracle Worker' is just such an incredibly powerful play on stage, and is so kinetic, and athletic.

If you can't play guitar and sing in Nashville, you might as well just be a construction worker.

I'm an incredibly hard worker, I'm incredibly tenacious, and I'm incredibly detail-oriented.

I'm Irish as hell: Kelly on one side, Shanley on the other. My father had been born on a farm in the Irish Midlands. He and his brothers had been shepherds there, cattle and sheep, back in the early 1920s. I grew up surrounded by brogues and Irish music, but stayed away from the old country till I was over 40. I just couldn't own being Irish.

God has given you the power to be the miracle worker.

Playwriting is the last great bastion of the individual writer. It's exciting precisely because it's where the money isn't. Money goes to safety, to consensus. It's not individualism.