It's politely assumed that democracy is a means of containing and restraining violence. But violence comes not from genes but from ideas.

It's wonderful to be able to sit down and write a play.

It's insulting to ask a dramatist what his view of his play is. I have no opinion.

I'm not interested in an imaginary world.

It’s wonderful to be able to sit down and write a play.

Sacrilege takes strange forms in the young.

The artist tries to show reason in experience and appearance – and lyric is the daily appearance, the commonplace dress, of reason. It shows us the rational. It makes the epic pattern human. It’s the footprint on the pathway. In the epic-lyric the individual and particular are no longer isolated but are placed in a historical, social, human pattern. That’s why there’s a political way of cutting bread or wearing shoes.

I write plays not to make money, but to stop myself from going mad. Because it’s my way of making the world rational to me.

It’s insulting to ask a dramatist what his view of his play is. I have no opinion.

It’s politely assumed that democracy is a means of containing and restraining violence. But violence comes not from genes but from ideas.