John Osborne Quotes

They spend their time looking forward to the past.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

You see I learnt at an early age what it was to be angry - angry and helpless. And I can never forget it. I knew more about - love... betrayal... and death, when I was ten years old than you will probably ever know in your life.

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.

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

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

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

Royalty is the gold filling in a mouthful of decay

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

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.

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

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!

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.

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

Here we are, we're alone in the universe, there's no God, it just seems that it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece of rock. And here we are. We've only got ourselves. Somehow, we've just got to make a go of it. We've only ourselves.

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