John Osborne Quotes

Royalty is the gold filling in a mouthful of decay

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

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

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

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

They spend their time looking forward to the past.

A refined sort of butcher, a woman is.

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.

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

Asking a writer what he thinks about criticism is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.

Let's pretend that we're human beings and that we're actually alive.

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

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

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

Oh heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm - that's all. I want to hear a warm, thrilling voice cry out Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I'm alive!

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Marriage is rather a silly habit.

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.

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.

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

The school teacher is certainly underpaid as a child minder but ludicrously overpaid as an educator.

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

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