I too feel hurt at the sort of reputation which hovers about my part of this venture. I cannot honestly make much of a case for myself. I played the … - Gore Vidal

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I too feel hurt at the sort of reputation which hovers about my part of this venture. I cannot honestly make much of a case for myself. I played the game stolidly according to rules I abhor. But in extenuation I should like to say what many others have said before me: the theater and its writers are seriously, perhaps fatally, hampered by economic pressure. Because it costs too much to put on a play, one works in a state of hysteria. Everything is geared to success. Yet art is mostly failure. And it is only from a succession of daring, flawed works that the occasional masterwork comes. But in our theater to fail is death and the author of a play which fails is regarded with much the same sympathy as the murderer of a child.