I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.

You think human nature is a beast, that it must be put in a cage. But it's the cage that makes the animal bad.

I'm attracted to the past.

I am not my body. My body is nothing without me.

Most British playwrights of my generation, as well as younger folks, apparently feel somewhat obliged to Russian literature - and not only those writing for theatres. Russian literature is part of the basic background knowledge for any writer. So there is nothing exceptional in the interest I had towards Russian literature and theatre. Frankly, I couldn't image what a culture would be like without sympathy towards Russian literature and Russia, whether we'd be talking about drama or Djagilev.

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

It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.