Winning children (who appear so guileless) are children who have discovered how effective charm and modesty and a delicately calculated spontaneity are in winning what they want.

I want you to try and remember what it was like to have been very young. And particularly the days when you were first in love; when you were like a person sleepwalking, and you didn’t quite see the street you were in, and didn’t quite hear everything that was said to you. You’re just a little bit crazy. Will you remember that, please?

Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.

The dead don't stay interested in us living people for very long. Gradually, gradually, they let go hold of the earth . . . and the ambitions they had . . . and the things they suffered . . . and the people they loved. They get weaned away from the earth - that's the way I put it - weaned away.

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

Comparisons of one's lot with others' teaches us nothing and enfeebles the will.

It is very necessary to have markers of beauty left in a world seemingly bent on making the most evil ugliness.