A lot interests me - but nothing surprises me particularly.

I know playwrights who like to kid themselves into saying that their characters are so well formed that they just take over. They determine the structure of the play. By which is meant, I suspect, only that the unconscious mind has done its work so thoroughly that the play just has to be filtered through the conscious mind. But there's work to be done - and discovery to be made.

Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.

What happens in a play is determined to a certain extent by what I thought might be interesting to have happen before I invented the characters, before they started taking over what happened, because they are three-dimensional individuals, and I cannot tell them what to do. Once I give them their identity and their nature, they start writing the play.

Very few people who met my adoptive mother in the last 20 years of her life could abide her, while many people who have seen my play find her fascinating. Heavens, what have I done?!

The difference between critics and audiences is that one is a group of humans and one is not.

Creativity is magic. Don't examine it too closely.