JOHN OSBORNE

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

The whole point of a sacrifice is that you give up something you never really wanted in the first place. People are doing it around you all the time. They give up their careers, say - or their beliefs - or sex.

They spend their time looking forward to the past.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

A refined sort of butcher, a woman is.

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

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.

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

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.