Some people need to stay at the top. They are afraid to re-start from zero because they fear the critics.

My idea of perfect happiness is a healthy family peace between nations and all the critics die.

But thankfully my first album 'Wide Screen ' was sort of a critics' darling - everyone raved about it but no one bought it. They only manufactured 10 000 copies I wasn't even in the running for failure!

Critics? Don't talk to me of critics! You think some jackanapes journalist his soul eaten away by the maggots of jealousy and failure has anything worthwhile to say of art? I don't.

But I honestly don't read critics. My dad reads absolutely everything ever written about me. He calls me up to read ecstatic reviews but I always insist that I can't hear them. If you give value to the good reviews you have to give value to the criticism.

By and large the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is after all a form of communication.

The '80s made up for all the abuse I took during the '70s. I outlived all my critics. By the time I retired everybody saw me as a venerable institution. Things do change.

My play Safe Sex was picked apart because critics thought it was untrue. It was a play in which no one had AIDS but the characters talked about how it was going to change their lives.

My second play The Birthday Party I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day who called it an absolute load of rubbish.

I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.