The whole philosophy of modern times is to dissolve distinctions between individuals and deal with them as large collections of people. It’s essentially self-interested on the part of authority.
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.
It was a different planet in 1967, the Broadway theatre. It had a little ashtray clamped to the back of every seat and the author got 10% of the gross.
If the audience is made to do not enough work, they resent it without knowing it. Too much and they get lost. There’s a perfect pace to be found. And a perfect place that is different for every line of the play.
We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.
As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that.
We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.
There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said – no. But somehow we missed it.
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.
I never had any frustration about writing uncredited. I always felt that the satisfaction of doing it was in the doing of it, really, and getting recognised by the small number of people that know what you did.
Traitors hoist by their own petard? – or victims of the gods? – we shall never know!
Before Plato could describe love, the loved one had to be invented. We would never love anybody if we could see past our invention. Bosie is my creation, my poem. In the mirror of invention, love discovered itself.
We’re actors. We’re the opposite of people.
You can persuade a man to believe almost anything provided he is clever enough, but it is much more difficult to persuade someone less clever.
You are an over-excited little man, with a need for self-expression far beyond the scope of your natural gifts. This is not discreditable. Neither does it make you an artist.
We must be born with an intuition of mortality.
Wars are fought for oil wells and coaling stations; for control of the Dardanelles or the Suez Canal; for colonial pickings to buy cheap in and conquered markets to sell dear in. War is capitalism with the gloves off.
Theater is a recreation. It can be much more, but unless it’s recreation, I don’t see the point of it.
Good things, when short, are twice as good.
Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society.