I doubt that art needed Ruskin any more than a moving train needs one of its passengers to shove it.

Rewriting isn't just about dialogue, it's the order of the scenes, how you finish a scene, how you get into a scene. All these final decisions are best made when you're there, watching. It's really enjoyable, but you've got to be there at the director's invitation. You can't just barge in and say, "I'm the writer."

I'm attracted to the past.

Fatherlessness didn't strike me as being an event. It was a state of life.

I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.

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

I shall have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love, love, love, above all. Love as there has never been in a play. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture.