A foul-mouthed oaf, a drunken laborer lying in a drain, a beaten wife with blackened eyes and torn clothes, cannot be made romantic to a child who sees how other children suffer from bad-tempered parents, from drunken fathers to termagant mothers.

Love doesn't grow on trees like apples in Eden - it's something you have to make. And you must use your imagination too.

What is it in the actor, the stage, that casts so powerful a spell on the young imagination?

The concept, the label, is perpetually hiding from us all the nature of the real.

Something you have to make...It's all work, work.

Old men when they begin to hear the last trumpet, on the morning breeze, often have a kind of absent-minded smile; like people listening. And their smiles are just politeness.

I write the big scenes first, that is, the scenes that carry the meaning of the book, the emotional experience.