The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.

Q.Do you have any positive message, in your opinion? A.Indeed I do think that I do. Q.Such as what? A.The crying, almost screaming, need of a great worldwide human effort to know ourselves and each other a great deal better, well enough to concede that no man has a monopoly on right or virtue any more than any man has a corner on duplicity and evil and so forth. If people, and races and nations, would start with that self-manifest truth, then I think that the world could sidestep the sort of corruption which I have involuntarily chosen as the basic, allegorical theme of my plays as a whole.

Switch clicking off in my head, turning the hot light off and the cool night on and — [He looks up, smiling sadly.] — all of a sudden there's—peace!

I don't believe anyone ever suspects how completely unsure I am of my work and myself and what tortures of self-doubting the doubt of others has always given me.

It's interesting, isn't it? . . . the chandelier . . . it reminds me of mushroom soup.

I don't want realism. I'll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell the truth. I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!

I saw that it was all over, put away in a box like a doll no longer cared for, the magical intimacy of our childhood together