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.
I’m the kind of person who embarks on an endless leapfrog down the great moral issues. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal and rebut the refutation. Endlessly.
The tragedy of journalism is that these are people doing their best work.
The causes we know everything about depend on causes we know very little about which depend upon causes we know absolutely nothing about.
Hell is very likely to be modernization infinitely extended.
If you were handed power on a plate you’d be left fighting over a plate.
I’m vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes.
Left to themselves people are noble, generous, uncorrupted, they’d create a completely new kind of society if only people weren’t so blind, stupid and selfish.