Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

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.

Martha: Oh, I like your anger. I think that's what I like about you most. Your anger.

In the thirties a whole school of criticism bogged down intellectually in those agitprop, social-realistic days. A play had to be progressive. A number of plays by playwrights who were thought very highly of then - they were very bad playwrights - were highly praised because their themes were intellectually and politically proper. This intellectual morass is very dangerous, it seems to me. A form of censorship.

All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time.

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

The one living playwright I admire without any reservation whatsoever is Samuel Beckett. I have funny feelings about almost all the others.