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

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" One senses that all the Bolsheviks, even those who ended up as cold-blooded autocrats, had been on a journey from idealism to something else, and didn't notice - to mix periods - when the Rubicon was crossed. "

" The possibilities are infinite with new writing; every time you open a new script, there's no limit to what it might contain. "

" 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. "

" I'm not a theoretician about playwriting, but I have a strong sense that plays have to be pitched - the scene, the line, the word - at the exact point where the audience has just the right amount of information. It's like Occam's razor. "

" 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. "

" I consider myself to be a very fortunate person and to have led a very fortunate life. "

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

" A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there. "

" I am as miserable as anyone - sometimes. "

" I'm attracted to the past. "

" In the end, one has to feel lucky that things fell out O.K. I've felt that all the years I've been writing plays. "

" It is easily and often overlooked that when Thomas Jefferson asserted that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were inalienable human rights, he did so on the ground that they had been endowed by God, our Creator. "

" Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text. "

" 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. "

" Possibly because I did start off as a journalist, my starting point has always been that you've got to keep an audience with you. Whatever you're doing, you always want a script to be a page-turner. It's very important never, ever, to feel above that. "

" I don't believe there is something called 'film' and something called 'theater,' and that words belong in the theater. Some rather bad films have few words in them; some good films have a lot of words in them. "

" My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful. "

" It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing. "

" If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life. "

" I take every possible side. "

" 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. "

" I was an awful critic. I operated on the assumption that there was an absolute scale of values against which art could be measured. I didn't trust my own subjective responses. "

" I'm a very boring person. "

" I read for interest and enjoyment, and when I cease to enjoy it I stop. "

" I barely remembered my father; I'm confused between genuine memory and the few photographs that survived. "

" When I think of how things could have turned out, I feel as if I've dodged, not just bullets, but 6mm shells. "

" I don't feel like a Londoner. "

" If I had been asked to write 1,200 words for a newspaper tomorrow, on any subject, I would just do it rather than leave a white hole in the page. And I think it's a very healthy attitude to take to writing anything. "

" Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want. "

" There are certain sorts of jokes which have only to do with the substitution of the unexpected word in a familiar context. If you translated something into French and then had it translated back into English by somebody who didn't know the original, you'd lose what was funny. "