Women always think you need a man, you need a father, as if they'd be the slightest use. Men are a dead weight, they're clumsy and maladjusted.

Courtesy is a waste of time, it weakens you and undermines you.

Children consume and fracture our lives. Children drag us towards disaster, it's unavoidable. When you see those laughing couples casting off into the sea of matrimony, you say to yourself, they have no idea, poor things, they just have no idea, they're happy. No one tells you anything when you start out. I have an old school pal who's just about to have a child with his new girlfriend. I said to him, "A child, at your age, are you insane?" The ten or dozen good years left to us before we get cancer or a stroke, and you're going to bugger yourself up with some brat?

Theatre is a mirror, a sharp reflection of society.

The interview is a game. I try to structure interviews in such a way that I say nothing. It's better for me to be mysterious.

I've never played that game. I don't consider myself a celebrity or an intellectual. I'm a writer and that's not the same… I don't want to have an opinion on current affairs, on politics and, in a way, that's bad for me because if you take the position of an intellectual, it gives you authority. But – too bad – I don't want to do it. I have pretension enough to think that writing should have its own authority.

After I write, I have nothing to say. The commentary afterwards is superfluous. I write. And that’s enough.

Laughter is very dangerous.

Sometimes after watching a production, I'm full of joy. I see things I haven't seen before and it's a real discovery. But that's rare.

In the first interviews I did, I was young. I didn't know any better and I used to take out my lipstick and put it on and I think that wasn't good at all. It was seen as too feminine ... perhaps they didn't take me seriously.

Too often what are described as interviews are inquisitions. It's not about the work. It's more like, "Who are you?" which really, really annoys me. If I didn't have to do them, I wouldn't. But if you don’t talk yourself, there will be 20 people talking about you ahead of you.

For a long time, I was more obsessed with relationships between men. And it was easier for me to write through a man's voice because it hid me like a mask. But I think I've made progress now. More and more I write better parts for women. I've improved.

There's no point in writing theatre if it isn't accessible, because no one will see it. The greatest playwrights such as Shakespeare or Molière – to whom, by the way, I am not comparing myself – they were also accessible.

What we like about women is sensuality, wildness, hormones. Women who make a song and dance about their intuition.