I never deliberately set out to shock, but when people don't walk out of my plays I think there is something wrong.

Oh heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm - that's all. I want to hear a warm, thrilling voice cry out Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I'm alive!

Here we are, we're alone in the universe, there's no God, it just seems that it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece of rock. And here we are. We've only got ourselves. Somehow, we've just got to make a go of it. We've only ourselves.

Don't be afraid of being emotional. You won't die of it.

The schoolteacher is certainly underpaid as a childminder, but ludicrously overpaid as an educator.

It is easy to answer the ultimate questions - it saves you bothering with the immediate ones.

Heroes, whatever high ideas we may have of them, are mortal and not divine. We are all as God made us and many of us much worse.