I don't like sympathetic characters.

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'.

We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets.

Theatre should be a taxing experience: the greatest achievement of a writer is to produce a character who creates anxiety.

I'm not interested in observed reality.

I submit all my plays to the National Theatre for rejection. To assure myself I am seeing clearly.

When I write, I am not giving a lecture, I am speculating on behavior. Sometimes this is dangerous, but it should be. As I say often, theatre is a dark place and we should keep the light out of it.

The artist who makes himself accessible is self-destructive.

I have plenty of political views and plenty of social and personal prejudices. I do not, however, value them.

A good play puts the audience through a certain ordeal.

I'm not interested in entertainment.

The cliché is true: People don't care what we know until they know we care.

Yesterday people were going past my window in t shirts and dresses. But that's the men at the BBC for you.

I cannot praise the common superfluity which women now use in their apparel.

What sort of girls do i like? - They are all angels.

I'm not trying to get five medals. I'm not trying to be Michael Phelps.

Probably the biggest challenge is actors, no matter how talented the actor is they don't have the capability of being in more than one place than one particular time, which is very vexing.

God uses singers in a mighty way, and I am grateful.

I'm half-Japanese, so I collect toys, like a Yayoi Kusama stuffed pumpkin.

For over a year I continued to submit mss, and have them rejected - the last few with rejection letters indicated the story was pretty good, but I was American.

Universities won't survive. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance learning is coming on fast.