I think we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility.

Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude of western democracies to the rest of the world.

There never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

I also found being called Sir rather silly.

Occasionally it does hit me, the words on a page. And I still love doing that, as I have for the last 60 years.

Isn't it true that every aristocrat wants to die?

All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.