John Osborne quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by John Osborne

John Osborne Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from John Osborne on Wise Famous Quotes.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.
[Time Magazine, October 31, 1977]

Don't be afraid of being emotional. You won't die of it.

We all of us waited for him to die. The family sent him a check every month, and hoped he'd get on with it quietly, without too much vulgar fuss.

It is widely held that too much wine will dull a man's desire. Indeed it will in a dull man.

Why do I do this every Sunday? Even the book reviews seem to be the same as last week's. Different books same reviews.

If you've no world of your own, it's rather pleasant to regret the passing of someone else's.

In London, love and scandal are considered the best sweeteners of tea.

Go on - but don't think you can kill my confidence. I've had experts doing it for years.

Don't clap too hard - it's a very old building.

It is not true that drink changes a man's character. It may reveal it more clearly.

It is easy to answer the ultimate questions - it saves you bothering with the immediate ones.

Jimmy: I hope you won't make the mistake of thinking for one moment that I am a gentleman.

Writers don't need love; all they require is money.

Jimmy: The injustice of it is almost perfect! The wrong people going
hungry, the wrong people being loved, the wrong people dying!

Royalty is the gold filling in a mouthful of decay

The schoolteacher is certainly underpaid as a childminder, but ludicrously overpaid as an educator.

They spend their time looking forward to the past.

There's no such thing as failure - just waiting for success.

I must say it's pretty dreary living in the American Age - unless you're an American of course. Perhaps all our children will be Americans.

Why don't we have a little game? Let's pretend that we're human beings, and that we're actually alive.

The British public has always had an unerring taste for ungifted amateurs.

Heroes, whatever high ideas we may have of them, are mortal and not divine. We are all as God made us and many of us much worse.

Heaven be thanked, we live in such an age when no man dies for love except upon the stage.

To be as vehement as he is is to be almost non-committal.

That voice that cries out doesn't have to be a weakling's does it?

Censorship is the commonest social blasphemy because it is mostly concealed, built into us by indolence, self-interest and cowardice.

I must be the luckiest man in the world. Not only am I bisexual, I am also Welsh.

Marriage is rather a silly habit.

And even in the hatred of the majority, there's a kind of triumph because I know that, although they'd never admit it, they secretly respect me.

George Bernard Shaw writes like a Pakistani who has learned English when he was twelve years old in order to become an accountant.

There will be a quick rash of hairy American filth, but it shouldn't threaten the existence of decent, serious British filth.

Asking a working writer what he feels about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.

A refined sort of butcher, a woman is.

Laughter's the nearest we ever get, or should get, to sainthood. It's the state of grace that saves most of us from contempt.

I never deliberately set out to shock, but when people don't walk out of my plays I think there is something wrong.