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" Rewriting isn't just about dialogue; it's the order of the scenes, how you finish a scene, how you get into a scene. "

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" When you try to grasp the way the Western world is going, you see that we are on a ratchet towards a surveillance state, which is coming to include the whole population in its surveillance. This is our reward for accepting the restraints on the way we live now. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" In the end, my children put me on to Pink Floyd when they were teenagers. "

" My desk faces the water, and I'm perfectly happy sitting there. I'm never lonely. "

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

" One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time. "

" 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. "

" You do know what's coming up when you're translating. I suppose the concentration, then, is on finding a formulation which is speakable and in character - and economical as well, actually. "

" Even when the writing seems very frivolous, I'm puritanical. I don't mean my subject matter. It's that I'm almost pathologically incapable of leaving something when I'm not quite happy with it. "

" My life is sectioned off into hot flushes, pursuits of this or that. "

" 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. "

" I'm not one of those writers who insist they don't read reviews and don't care much about them. I do read them, and I do care about them, and they're not always what you want them to be in an ideal world. "

" If I wanted to change the world, the last thing I would do is write a play. "

Change The World

" 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. "

" Schepisi is the sort of director who could, would, and frequently did phone me whenever he came across a textual problem. "

" If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation. "

" If you don't know what is being said, the rest of the actor's work is wasted. "

" We're actors. We're the opposite of people. "

" 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. "

" It is better to be quotable than to be honest. "

" 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 think age is a very high price to pay for maturity. "

" I write scenes - often quite long scenes - mainly because I still get seduced into writing six lines where one and a half will do. "

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

" I'm aware of my old plays and occasionally think about them, but I'm much more anxious about finding the next play. "

" In 2005, I got an email from Belarus Free Theatre. They were emailing playwrights in America and England announcing their existence and saying they would like support from us. I wrote back and asked if they wanted us to visit. They said, 'Yes, we'd love that.' "

" I'm vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes. "

" Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self. "

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