“Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.”

“You can't but know that if you can capture the emotions of the audience as well as their minds, the play will work better, because it's a narrative art form.”

“It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.”

“I was delighted to not go to university. I couldn't wait to be out of education.”

“I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.”