Nowadays, an artist is someone who makes art mean the things he does.

My mind gets into a verbal mode.

Theater is still a medium which attracts young writers. You'd think that it would be all over by now, with television and film. But it's not.

I've lost all capacity for disbelief. I'm not sure that I could even rise to a little gentle scepticism.

Life is a gamble, at terrible odds - if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.

Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.