I write scenes - often quite long scenes - mainly because I still get seduced into writing six lines where one and a half will do.

The idea that all the people locked up in mental hospitals are sane while all the people walking about are mad is merely a literary cliche, put about by people who should be locked up. I assure you there is not much in it. Taken as a whole, the sane are out there the sick are in here. For example you are in here because you have delusions that sane people are put in mental hospitals.

No problem is insoluble, given a big enough plastic bag.

The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have been left so much to our own devices—after a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people's.

Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.

There we were - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance - and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. Don't you see?! We're actors - we're the opposite of people!

For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next time I write a play I will be revealed as someone who is no good at all.