A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

I don't intend to simply go away and write my plays and be a good boy. I intend to remain an independent and political intelligence in my own right.

The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.

Don't forget the earth's about five thousand million years old, at least. Who can afford to live in the past?

When you lead a life of scholarship you can't be bothered with the humorous realities, you know, tits, that kind of thing.

I found the offer of a knighthood something that I couldn't possibly accept. I found it to be somehow squalid, a knighthood. There's a relationship to government about knights.

I ought not to speak about the dead because the dead are all over the place.