She was an extraordinary human being whose work and whose life were extremely intertwined. She was not unlike the heroines of most of her plays a strong-minded, independent, serious good person.

So many people, whether they knew her or not, felt somehow connected to her. If you went out with her to a restaurant in New York or anywhere in the country because her plays were done all over the country it was like going out with a rock star: people coming up to her and saying, 'How much your work meant to me. I feel like I have seen my life through your eyes.

Wendy was a smart, kind, warm, funny, talented, generous, successful woman - that we all know. But perhaps we didn't know was how deeply, profoundly, universally loved she was. Not by just the 1,000 who are here in the Beaumont today ... but by those who did not know her, who had never even met her, but who had heard her speak or seen her plays or read her books and felt as we do, that she was their friend.

I feel as if my heart and mind stopped on Jan. 30 in room 1917 of Memorial Hospital.

If you said that Wendy was a feminist, she would say, 'I'm a humanist.' That (line)'s actually in The Heidi Chronicles . ... She managed to write from a very specific point of view for a very wide audience. And she had a wide variety of interests; she was committed in many areas.

She was an extraordinary human being whose work and whose life were extremely intertwined. She was not unlike the heroines of most of her plays — a strong-minded, independent, serious good person.