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" 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. "

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" A 'human right' is, by definition, timeless. It cannot adhere to some societies and not others, at some times and not at other times. "

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" Very often in Chekhov, where he exhibits a little bit of human behavior that you recognize as true, you give a little laugh. It's like a reflex. "

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" Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society. "

" I'm vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes. "

" I've never really worked out this thought, and I don't know if I'm really conscious of it, but I can see there's an attraction about writing about a period that's over and isn't going to change colour while you look at it. "

" With plays that require any kind of reading program, I'm reading for a couple of years before using the material. "

" As a child, I was airlifted out of the path of the Nazis. Unfortunately, I was parachuted into the path of the Japanese, but then I was airlifted again to India. "

" One always likes to think that other countries are not like one's own. "

" Nobody would be killed on the roads if the speed limit were 10 miles an hour. "

" It's very common for people to recommend something to me because they're going on what I've already written, when, what really is the case, is that you want to write about something you haven't written about, in ways that you haven't done before. "

" 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. "

" I want to support the whole idea of the humanities and teaching the humanities as being something that - even if it can't be quantitatively measured as other subjects - it's as fundamental to all education. "

" Other people's lives come at us without a backstory most of the time. The present is like that. "

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" I've seldom minded other people's opinions, but the other side of that coin is that I've seldom been interested by them, um their opinions about me I mean. "

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" If I see an actor in a role that is really terrifying, no matter how many times I meet him socially, I'm still frightened of him. I think he's going to hit me. "

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" From as long as, literally as far back as I can remember I've liked puns, word jokes, I can literally recall looking at a comic at the age of six or seven and I remember what I enjoyed and what it was precisely and how the joke worked. "

" I actually went to an Oasis concert. I thought they were a brilliant songwriting band. "

" It takes a lot of effort to be vibrant. "

" I don't respond well to the Olympic noise, which is the noise of nationalistic triumphalism. "

" The printed word is no longer as in demand as when I was of the age of pupils or even at the age of the teachers teaching them. "

" All your life, you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it is like being ambushed by a grotesque. "

" The whole thing about writing a play is that it's all about controlling the flow of information traveling from the stage to the audience. It's a stream of information, but you've got your hand on the tap, and you control in which order the audience receives it and with what emphasis, and how you hold it all together. "

" The whole notion of journalism being an institution whose fundamental purpose is to educate and inform and even, one might say, elevate, has altered under commercial pressure, perhaps, into a different kind of purpose, which is to divert and distract and entertain. "

" I take every possible side. "

" I feel that when I began writing, I had a need to know more about the play before I got into it. I think that's the way I was thinking. But my actual experience is that the best way to find out what the structure is, is by writing the play out laterally. You just have got to be brave enough to start without knowing where you are going. "

" I think journalism is important. "

" Good things, when short, are twice as good. "

" Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. "

" I'm so grateful to grab hold of something that wants to be a play. It doesn't happen very often. I don't have unwritten plays waiting for their turn. "

" Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end? "