76 Quotes by John Osborne

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]

In spite of the concerted press campaign to transform me into some upstart wordsmith who had inexplicably won the pools ('Osborne mellows now he's on £1,000 a week'), I was not earning great sums from any of the three plays now that tow of them had finished their Broadway runs.

It is better to be a has-been than a never-was

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

Like most actors, she was hysterical when unemployed and resentful when appearing every night to full houses. She also entertained the common belief that a writer is only working when he can be seen head down at his desk. Why are you drinking/dreaming/farting/fornicating instead of making typewriter noises?

The bit was in my mouth. At last, for the first time since sleeping in crab-infested blankets in the dressing-room at Hayling Island, living on evaporated milk and biscuits, swanking about as a peroxided Hamlet, to an audience of geriatric holiday-makers, I had contrived some sort of personal control over the whole brash enterprise. I would only have myself to blame. The release from benign paternalism was firingly enjoyable.

Her dismissive skill was subtle and brutal, sometimes no more than a thin smile, a watery upward look or an amused intake of breath, a scanning cauterizing instrument which rendered any endeavor puny or extravagantly indulgent . Her son was her prize victim.

Jimmy: One day, when I'm no longer spending my days running a sweet-stall, I may write a book about us all. It's all here. (slapping his forehead) Written in flames a mile high. And it won't be recollected in tranquillity either, picking daffodils with Auntie Wordsworth. It'll be recollected in fire, and blood. My blood.

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