We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. but there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.

I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.

A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.

All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.

We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.

The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.

To be frank: the translations that often sound bad in the mouths of the actors, these have often been done by linguists.