People Often Ask Me How Long It

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.

As A Fairly Objective Judgment, I Do Think That My Plays As They Come Out Are Better Than Most Other Things That Are Put On The Same Year. But That Doesn't Make Them Very Good Necessarily.

Read The Great Stuff, But Read The Stuff That Isn't So Great, Too. Great Stuff Is Very Discouraging. If You Read Only Beckett And Chekhov, You'll Go Away And Only Deliver Telegrams For Western Union.

Unless You Are Terribly, Terribly Careful, You Run The Danger-- Without Even Knowing It Is Happening To You-- Of Slipping Into The Fatal Error Of Reflecting The Public Taste Instead Of Creating It. Your Responsibility Is To The Public Consciousness, Not To The Public View Of Itself.

I Don't Think I've Ever Written About Me. I'm Not A Character In Any Of My Plays, Except That Boy, That Silent Boy That Turns Up In Three Tall Women.