James Agate

"Your Englishman, confronted by something abnormal will always pretend that it isn't there. If he can't pretend that, he will look through the object, or round it, or above it or below it, or in any direction except into it. If, however, you force him to look into it, he will at once pretend that he sees the object not for what it is but for something that he would like it to be."

"Shaw's plays are the price we pay for Shaw’s prefaces."

"A professional is a man who can do his job when he doesn't feel like it; an amateur is one who can't when he does feel like it."

"Perhaps, after all, there is something in the theory that only the ultra-busy can find time for everything."

"The maddest phenomenon in this wholly mad world – that the filming or wirelessing of an event, whether it is the Grand National or an attack in force on the Maginot Line, is held to be of more importance than the event itself."

"I don't know very much but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it…My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made."

"The producer. This is a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act."

"The worst of failure in this kind is that it spoils the market for more competent performers."

"I like listening to it just as I like looking at a fuchsia drenched with rain."