You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good.
All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.
Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it, but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task.
Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice.
It was difficult being a conscientious objector in the 1940's, but I felt I had to stick to my guns.
No one wanted me to be a conscientious objector. My parents certainly didn't want it. My teacher and mentor, Joe Brearley, didn't want it. My friends didn't want it. I was alone.
I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth - certainly greater than sex, although sex isn't too bad either.
I used to get up at five in the morning and play cricket.
Drama happens in big cricket matches. But also in small cricket matches.
Cricket, the whole thing, playing, watching, being part of the Gaieties, has been a central feature of my life.
The effect of depleted uranium, used by America in the Gulf War, is never referred to.
While The United States is the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, it is also the most detested nation that the world has ever known.
It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.
There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.
My father was a tailor. He worked from seven o'clock in the morning until seven at night. At least when he got home, my mother always cooked him a very good dinner. Lots of potatoes, I remember; he used to knock them down like a dose of salts. He needed it, after a 12-hour day.
I left school at sixteen - I was fed up and restless. The only thing that interested me at school was English language and literature, but I didn't have Latin, and so couldn't go on to university. So I went to a few drama schools, not studying seriously; I was mostly in love at the time and tied up with that.
I'm well aware that I have been described in some quarters as being 'enigmatic, taciturn, prickly, explosive and forbidding'. Well, I have my moods like anyone else; I won't deny it.
One should also remember that the U.S. is the biggest exporter of torture weapons in the world, though the U.K. is not far behind in the league table. We never stopped, even under Robin Cook's supposedly ethical foreign policy.
Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.
The Room I wrote in 1957, and I was really gratified to find that it stood up. I didn't have to change a word.
