There are two things that a playwright can have. Success or failure. I imagine there are dangers in both. Certainly the danger of being faced with indifference or hostility is discouraging, and it may be that success - acceptance if it's too quick, too lightning-quick - can turn the heads of some people.

There are a number of contemporary playwrights whom I admire enormously, but that's not at all the same thing as being influenced.

I think I was probably wondering, having looked at human beings for a long time, wondering if evolution ever took place. And I still have my doubts.

Every writer's got to pay some attention, I suppose, to what his critics say because theirs is a reflection of what the audience feels about his work.

If you want a commercial success - it's the confusion of commerce with art. A successful play is not considered to be the best written. It is the one that sells the most tickets. Those standards are destructive [to theatre].

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?!

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.