It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

When I think of how things could have turned out, I feel as if I've dodged, not just bullets, but 6mm shells.

My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.

You're familiar with the tragedies of antiquity, are you? The great homicidal classics?

The whole notion of journalism being an institution whose fundamental purpose is to educate and inform and even, one might say, elevate, has altered under commercial pressure, perhaps, into a different kind of purpose, which is to divert and distract and entertain.

I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation.

What did you have in mind? A short, blunt human pyramid?