"Here lies James Quinn. Deign, reader, to be taught, Whate’er thy strength of body, force of thought, In Nature’s happiest mould however cast, To this complexion thou must come at last."

"Are these the choice dishes the Doctor has sent us? Is this the great poet whose works so content us? This Goldsmith’s fine feast, who has written fine books? Heaven sends us good meat, but the Devil sends cooks?"

"Heart of oak are our ships, Heart of oak are our men; We always are ready."

"Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll, Who wrote like an angel, and talk’d like poor Poll."

"Prologues like compliments are loss of time; ’T is penning bows and making legs in rhyme."

"Let others hail the rising sun: I bow to that whose course is run."

"His profession made him rich and he made his profession respectable."

"This scholar, rake, Christian, dupe, gamester, and poet."

"Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves."

"Their cause I plead,—plead it in heart and mind; A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind."

"I am disappointed by that stroke of death that has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure."

"Back in my 20s, I was playing poker to avoid living. I wasn’t very satisfied with life. I used to play in a big game in Archway. And we’d play as much as we possibly could and for as much money as we had, and that went on for a couple of years."

"No one ever wanted to see it as anything other than a boring play about a middle-aged man having a mid-life crisis. I think it’s about rather more than that - or maybe it’s not. Maybe that’s exactly what it is about."

"We've all seen 'Jewing it up' performances. They are about as miserable to watch as as 'camping it up' performances when representing gays."

"I was thinking in the cab on the way here that when I did press for the original production it felt like this was what I’ve always dreamt of — to be talking about myself, and about a play that I’ve written, and to be photographed. It was what I wanted. Now it’s just part of the job."

"My only obligation is to keep myself and other people guessing."

"The best actors always retain an air of mystery. The boring actors are the ones who give 100 per cent. One will never get to know the real Jude Law."

"The day war broke out, my Missus said to me – she looked at me and she said, "What good are you?""

""Well," she said, "All the young fellas'll be getting called up and you'll have to go back to work!" Ooh – she's got a cruel tongue!"

"He said "I'll punch your head!" I said "Whose?" He said "Yours!" I said "Mine?" He said "Yes!" I said "Oh?" He said "Want a fight?" I said "Who?" He said "You!" I said "Me?" He said "Yes!" I said "No!" So we then came to words, he said "You're a cad!" I said "Cad?" He said "Yes!" I said "Who?" He said "Who?" I said "Yes." He said "You!" I said "Oh!" So of course then I knew."

"She said,"What are you supposed to do?" I said, "I'm supposed to stop Hitler's army landing." She said, "What! – you?" I said, "No – there's Charlie Evans, Dick Roberts...I said, "There's seven or eight of us, altogether." I said, "We're in a group." I said, "We're on guard in a little hut behind the Dog and Pullet." She said, "What's the good of being in a little hut behind the Dog and Pullet?" She said, "I suppose that was your idea!" I said, "Aye, and that Charlie Evans wants to claim it as his!""

"She said, "Do you know this Hitler? Have you ever met him?" I said, "Do I – of course I don't!" She said, "Well how are you going to know which is him if they do land?" I said, "Well, I've got a tongue in my head, haven't I?""

"Woman: Do come along quick, there's a house on fire. Fire Chief: A house on fire? Just a moment, lady – what's the address? Woman: Grimshaw Street. Fire Chief: Grimshaw Street – Grimshaw … now wait a minute, I know it as well as can be, and I just can't place it. Woman: Oh come along, it's only just round... Fire Chief: No, no, no – don't tell me, let me try and think of it for myself. Grimshaw St–... oh, isn't that annoying, I could walk straight to it, and I can't think of it."

"I won't eat anything that has intelligent life, but I'd gladly eat a network executive or a politician."

"Money can't buy poverty."

"Hookers have to deliver on their promise... unlike politicians."

"I feel about Keaton the way an organist thinks of Bach."

"I was about five and a half or six when I converted [to vegetarianism] … I was brought up the first five years of my life in London, in the working-class part of the city, where the only animals that a child is liable to see are domestic animals, or cats, or pigeons, or horses, none of which one eats. Then I was evacuated onto a farm when the war came, and billeted with this family of farmers, and I got very friendly with a rabbit—George, the rabbit. Then one day, George the rabbit was George the lunch. For a farming family there was nothing obscene about that. They kill animals; they serve them up at table and say, "Hey, yes, that's the animal you were playing with yesterday!"—which is not abnormal. It was obscene to me as a child."

"I carry Keaton's photo around with me to remind me what happened to him. If the Hollywood system can destroy him it can destroy me."

"Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act."

"When I quoted Bulwer Lytton's "The pen is mightier than the sword" to Marty Feldman he added reflectively, "Yes, and considerably easier to write with.""

"Sex is two plus two making five, rather than four. Sex is the X ingredient that you can't define, and it's that X ingredient between two people that make both a man and a woman good in bed. It's all relative. There are no rules."

"The earth only has so much bounty to offer and inventing ever larger and more notional prices for that bounty does not change its real value."

"The appropriation of radical thinking by lazy, self-obsessed hippies is a public relations disaster that could cost the earth."

"No collection of people who are all waiting for the same thing are capable of holding a natural conversation. Even if the thing they are waiting for is only a taxi."

"Lies are as important as truth, for without lies, the truth is worthless."

"Leave a message, don't leave a message. live, die, it's all the same dream."

"Things get shaped straight and thin for reasons of aerodynamics. Missiles and skyscrapers are shaped the way they are on the soundest principles of engineering, not as monuments to the dick. In fact, so is the dick. The dick is shaped like a dick because that is the most efficient shape for a dick to be. That's why it's dick shaped. I mean a dick shaped like a table would cause all sorts of practical spatial problems."

"Archie Rice: I'm dead behind these eyes. I'm dead, just like the whole inert, shoddy lot out there. It doesn't matter because I don't feel a thing, and neither do they."

"Archie Rice: Let me know where you're working tomorrow night and I'll come and see you."

"John Osborne spoke out in a vein of ebullient, free-wheeling rancour that betokened the arrival of something new in the theatre – a sophisticated, articulate lower-class. Most of the critics were offended by Jimmy Porter, but not on account of his anger; a working-class hero is expected to be angry. What nettled them was something quite different: his self-confidence. This was no envious inferior whose insecurity they could pity."

"George Dillon: [I]t's easy to answer the ultimate questions – it saves you bothering with the immediate ones."

"This is a letter of hate. It is for you my countrymen, I mean those men of my country who have defiled it. The men with manic fingers leading the sightless, feeble, betrayed body of my country to its death."

"Jimmy Porter: They spend their time mostly looking forward to the past."

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

"Archie Rice: Don't clap too hard – it's a very old building."

"As far as I could discover, the notion that a play could succeed without any further help from the actor than a simple impersonation of his part never occurred to Tree."

"A charming fellow, and so clever: he models himself on me."

"Every man is a potential genius until he does something."

"Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humour: he will always use it in evidence against you."