Every Monster Was A Man

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.

In The Thirties A Whole School Of Criticism Bogged Down Intellectually In Those Agitprop, Social-realistic Days. A Play Had To Be Progressive. A Number Of Plays By Playwrights Who Were Thought Very Highly Of Then - They Were Very Bad Playwrights - Were Highly Praised Because Their Themes Were Intellectually And Politically Proper. This Intellectual Morass Is Very Dangerous, It Seems To Me. A Form Of Censorship.

American Critics Are Like American Universities. They Both Have Dull And Half-dead Faculties.

In The Two Or Three Or Four Months That It Takes Me To Write A Play, I Find That The Reality Of The Play Is A Great Deal More Alive For Me Than What Passes For Reality. I'm Infinitely More Involved In The Reality Of The Characters And Their Situation Than I Am In Everyday Life. The Involvement Is Terribly Intense.

The Act Of Creation, As You Very Well Know, Is A Lonely And Private Matter And Has Nothing To Do With The Public Area... The Performance Of The Work One Creates.