When I am directing, it is much, much, much, much, much different. I'm a much more practical person in the world, I show up on time, I am very rigorous about scheduling, and I am very focused. But when I'm writing I am just a big, irresponsible mess and I'm just impossible to get in touch with, and I don't spend time with friends.
A pioneer in this genre [ writing about the refugee crisis] : the book A Seventh Man, by the great John Berger, decades ago evoked the lives of migrant workers in Europe.
Try to be original in your play and as clever as possible; but don't be afraid to show yourself foolish; we must have freedom of thinking, and only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.
For a writer you have to be interested in different cultures, different backgrounds. You are not there to write only about your village. You're there to show a bit of your village, but also to understand other villages.
Prowling about the rooms, sitting down, getting up, stirring the fire, looking out the window, teasing my hair, sitting down to write, writing nothing, writing something and tearing it up...
Putting down on paper what you have to say is an important part of writing, but the words and ideas have to be shaped and cleaned, cleaned as severely as a dog cleans a bone, cleaned until there's not a shred of anything superfluous.
Happy is he who looks only into his work to know if it will succeed, never into the times or the public opinion; and who writes from the love of imparting certain thoughts and not from the necessity of sale - who writes always to the unknown friend.
My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.