I Don't Like Symbolism That Hits You

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.

People Often Ask Me How Long It Takes Me To Write A Play, And I Tell Them 'all Of My Life.'

The Greatest Problem With Irish Wolfhounds, Though, Is That They Don't Live Very Long: Their Great Hearts Give Out. A Good Deal Of This Is Genetic, Of Course, But I Think It Is In Part That They Worry So For Us, Care So Much.

The Avant-garde Theater Is Fun; It Is Free-wheeling, Bold, Iconoclastic, And Often Wildly, Wildly Funny. If You Will Approach It With Childlike Innocence -- Putting Your Standard Responses Aside, For They Do Not Apply -- If You Will Approach It On Its Own Terms, I Think You Will Be In For A Liberating Surprise. I Think You May No Longer Be Content With Plays That You Can't Remember Halfway Down The Block.

I Was Twenty-nine Years Old And I Wasn't A Very Good Poet And I Wasn't A Very Good Novelist, [so] I Thought I Would Try Writing A Play, Which Seems To Have Worked Out A Little Better.