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" One doesn't want one's democracy to behave like a dictatorial or fascistic police. One doesn't. "

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" People have quite a simple idea about 'Anna Karenina.' They feel that the novel is entirely about a young married woman who falls in love with a cavalry officer and leaves her husband after much agony, and pays the price for that. "

" I'm a playwright who gets involved in movies when I'm not writing a play. "

" A publisher many years ago asked if I'd like to write a novel for £50. And I said, 'Absolutely.' "

" In the period before the arrival of Mrs. Thatcher, politics had been in such low esteem. Everything was so hedged, so mealy-mouthed. Then along came this woman who seemed to have no manners at all and said exactly what she thought. Everyone's eyes were popping and their jaws were dropping, and I really enjoyed that. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When Auden said his poetry didn't save one Jew from the gas chamber, he'd said it all. "

" I am as miserable as anyone - sometimes. "

" I can't remember what my first script was. "

" 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. "

" Personally, I read reviews because I'm interested by them, but they don't have utility for me. "

" Theater in New York is nearer to the street. In London, you have to go deep into the building, usually, to reach the place where theater happens. On Broadway, only the fire doors separate you from the sidewalk, and you're lucky if the sound of a police car doesn't rip the envelope twice a night. "

" Everybody I know is writing plays twice a year. It's sort of making me feel I am not up to much. "

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

" When I was 20, in 1957, and maybe you would say I was old enough to know better, but nevertheless, I was completely nuts about Buddy Holly. And I loved pop bands that had absolutely no intellectual pretensions whatsoever. I loved the Monkees. "

" If you are well known at something else, you get points for doing stuff which lots of other people do, and much more, and they don't get any points at all. You get over-praised, over-credited. "

" The idea that being human and having rights are equivalent - that rights are inherent - is unintelligible in a Darwinian world. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 have about a dozen cassettes lying about which I use in random order. Very often, I pick up a cassette to dictate a letter, and I find my voice coming back at me with the lines of plays three years old. "

" I don't feel like a Londoner. "

" The truth of the matter is that I used to be much more - as it were - shy. Now I don't care! "

" When I was younger, I could do something useful just by being free for half a day, but now I need five days to get the world I've left out of my head and ten days or a fortnight not talking to anyone to hold what I need to hold inside my head. "

" Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them. "

Responsibilities

" All of my scripts are based on other people's novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who writes for theatre. I do not see film work as a continuation of writing for theatre. It is more of an interruption of the writing process. "

" One of the nice things about the world of filmmaking is that you make friends in the business. Sometimes directors feel a script needs something, but they're not sure what it is, so they show it to a friend; if the friend is a writer, he ends up kicking around with that script for a while. "

" People think I'm very nice, you know. And I'm not as nice as they think. "

" Theater is still a medium which attracts young writers. You'd think that it would be all over by now, with television and film. But it's not. "