Tom
Yet you cared for nobody when you made me live in it—perfect as the frame that held me. The strength you gave me in my own relentlessness was also yours. You glowed when you wrote it; as you made me glow when I painted. You felt the joy which only a creator knows when beauty and perfection slowly struggle out of his inner vision.
Grant
But, my dear fellow....
Tom
Wait. Contrast this play with The Sand Bar! With your skill as a builder you turned what was a lonely palace on a peak—aflame with my art—into a scrambly suburban residence where miserable ordinary people function. You produced a miserable makeshift of a play and made Tom Robinson a miserable makeshift of a man. (Accusing him.) But when you played tricks on me you played tricks on yourself. That’s what you did when you took from Tom Robinson his genius and made him paint pot-boilers at the National. Pot-boilers! Pot-boilers! Me!! Good God, man, did you know what you were doing when you rewrote this play?
Grant
(Slowly)
I knew exactly what I was doing. I was turning it into a popular success.
Tom