Few Sensible Authors Are Happy

To A Certain Extent I Imagine A Play Is Completely Finished In My Mind - In My Case, At Any Rate - Without My Knowing It, Before I Sit Down To Write.

The One Living Playwright I Admire Without Any Reservation Whatsoever Is Samuel Beckett. I Have Funny Feelings About Almost All The Others.

You Find Very Few Critics Who Approach Their Job With A Combination Of Information And Enthusiasm And Humility That Makes For A Good Critic. But There Is Nothing Wrong With Critics As Long As People Don't Pay Any Attention To Them. I Mean, Nobody Wants To Put Them Out Of A Job And A Good Critic Is Not Necessarily A Dead Critic. It's Just That People Take What A Critic Says As A Fact Rather Than An Opinion, And You Have To Know Whether The Opinion Of The Critic Is Informed Or Uninformed, Intelligent Of Stupid -- But Most People Don't Take The Trouble.

And The West, Encumbered By Crippling Alliances, And Hardened With A Morality Too Rigid To Accommodate Itself To The Swing Of Events, Must ..... Eventually ..... Fall.

Every Writer's Got To Pay Some Attention, I Suppose, To What His Critics Say Because Theirs Is A Reflection Of What The Audience Feels About His Work.