If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting.

Worship isn't destructive, Martin. I know that. I don't. I only know it's the core of his life. What else has he got? He can hardly read. He knows no physics or engineering to make to world real for him. No paintings to show him how others have enjoyed it. No music except television jingles. No history except tales from a desperate mother. No friends. Not one kid to give him a joke, or make him know himself more moderately. He's a modern citizen for whom society doesn't exist.

Figaro is a bad play. It stirs up hatred between the classes. In France, it has caused nothing but bitterness. My own dear sister,Antoinette, writes me that she is beginning to be frightened of her own people.

I think plays, like books, are endemic. They grow out of the soil of the writer and the place he's writing about. I think, you just can't move them about, you know.

I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint.

Goodness is nothing in the furnace of art.

Can you think of anything worse one can do to anybody than take away their worship?