If you examine the history of any playwright of the past twenty - five or thirty years - I'm not talking about the comedy boys, I'm talking about the more serious writers - it seems inevitable that almost every one has been encouraged until the critics feel that they have built them up beyond the point where they can control them; then it's time to knock them down again.

Art is nowhere near as dangerous as it should be.

Im not suggesting that the play is without fault; all of my plays are imperfect, Im rather happy to say-it leaves me something to do.

Progress is a set of assumptions.

A rather ugly thing starts happening: the playwright finds himself knocked down for works that quite often are just as good or better than the works he's been praised for previously. And a lot of playwrights become confused by this and they start doing imitations of what they've done before, or they try to do something entirely different, in which case they get accused by the same critics of not doing what they used to do so well.

To write a play one must be born a playwright. Otherwise, you're starting at a huge disadvantage.

Influence is a matter of selection - both acceptance and rejection.