How can the unknown merit reverence? In other words how can you revere that of which you are ignorant? At the same time, it would be ridiculous to propose that what we know merits reverence. What we know merits any one of a number of things, but it stands to reason reverence isn't one of them. In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

There is a movement to get an international criminal court in the world, voted for by hundreds of states-but with the noticeable absence of the United States of America.

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

There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.

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

My second play, The Birthday Party, I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day, who called it an absolute load of rubbish.