When I think of how things could have turned out, I feel as if I've dodged, not just bullets, but 6mm shells.

A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.

Any revival in which I am involved is liable to change.

Back in the East you can't do much without the right papers, but with the right papers you can do anything The believe in papers. Papers are power.

Fatherlessness didn't strike me as being an event. It was a state of life.

Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want.

I burn with no causes.

I can't remember what my first script was.

I cannot say that I write with any social objective. One writes because one loves writing, really.

I don't act, I don't direct, I don't design.

I don't think Stoppardian has a precise definition.

I feel overestimated.

I take every possible side.

I think that the present is worth attention, one shouldn't sacrifice it to future conceptions of, of this future or that future.

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

I was so thrilled being a reporter, because it gave you the kind of access to people that you wouldn't ever get to meet.

I write out of my intellectual experience.

I write scenes - often quite long scenes - mainly because I still get seduced into writing six lines where one and a half will do.

I'm a conservative kind of person. I don't think rightwing is quite the same thing. But I acknowledge my conservatism of temperament.

I'm a very boring person.