I'm not interested in observed reality.

I submit all my plays to the National Theatre for rejection. To assure myself I am seeing clearly.

It is impossible - now, at this point in the long journey of human culture - to avoid the sense that pain is necessity; that it is neither accident, nor malformation, nor malice, nor misunderstanding, that it is integral to the human character both in its inflicting and in its suffering, this terrible sense Tragedy alone has articulated, and will continue to articulate, and in so doing, make beautiful...

When I write, I am not giving a lecture, I am speculating on behavior. Sometimes this is dangerous, but it should be. As I say often, theatre is a dark place and we should keep the light out of it.

The artist who makes himself accessible is self-destructive.

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'.

I believe in poetic discourse, in the value of speech in a non-naturalistic way; it's speculative.