John Osborne

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

"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."

"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."

"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."