"The hero of Tynan Right and Left is, as the title suggests, Tynan. The ostensible subject matter is of course wider, for the book consists of Tynan's writing over the past 10 years, not only in his capacities as theater and cinema reviewer but also as the author of occasional pieces, interviews and essays on a wide variety of people … But whatever he is writing about Tynan never forgets the subject on which he is the leading world expert: namely Kenneth Tynan, cultural journalist, moralist, socialist. "Occupation: opinion-monger observer of artistic phenomena, amateur ideologue.""

"Tynan's interests cover an unusually broad range, and his references are equally wide: How many other critics would quote Seneca on Humphrey Bogart or Coleridge on the Beatles? … As a theater critic he has been extremely influential, and always in useful directions. Sometimes his concern for the state of contemporary drama leads him to overestimate particular plays for their tactical importance in the struggle for the sort of theater he would like to see … the state of British theater is far healthier now than it was when Tynan first appeared on the scene, and for this he can take some credit. … Like all good critics sooner or later, he has come up against the form and content argument, and like all good critics (at least when it is put in either-or terms) he comes down on the side of content. … Like George Orwell he has the ability always to pick on the important issues even when briefly reviewing a film or play which is in itself of little interest. He raises the right questions even if he does not always come up with the right answers, and usually he does come up with the right answers. Almost without exception he is readable and stimulating, whatever the subject; he is very honest, and often funny. If he is too interested in himself, there are after all a lot of people who are much less interesting."

"Ken, the Tot of Destiny, had turned into the Marquis de Sade, and I in response had become a virago."

"The two oldest professions in the world — ruined by amateurs."

"Dorothy Parker and I were standing on the sidewalk during the intermission of a Shubert opening night when the Alexander Woolcott, his rotund figure draped in an inverness cape, came toward us. I say "us" but I mean "her." Woolcott rarely wasted his minutes on anyone less than a potential celebrity, and not being very potential, I had already been introduced to him for at least the tenth time. "Why don't you two come back to my apartment after the curtain comes down, when this mountain of crap is en route to Kane's warehouse? You can have a drink with Junior while I'm writing the obit, and then perhaps a game of anagrams, if this faylow," meaning me, "I never remember his name, can spell." [...] It was the beginning of an attentive friendship, as I could judge by the number and caliber of clever insults launched in my direction. I became a regular at his Sunday breakfasts where I met the by-liners of the city and its theatrical stars. For Woolcott it was always a command performance. He worked at his friendships, and despaired when any one of his chosen group misinterpreted his abuse. Au fond sentimental as Shirley Temple underneath that biting exterior, he refused to be criticized himself."

"I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini."

"Alexander Woollcott: What could be rarer than a Woollcott First Edition? Franklin Pierce Adams: A Woollcott second edition."

"[You look like] a dishonest Abe Lincoln."

"I have no need of your God-damned sympathy. I only wish to be entertained by some of your grosser reminiscences."

"I've never had the impertinence to be sorry for Helen Keller. I'd as soon be sorry for Niagara Falls. But now as I bring the story up to date, I'm shriveled with shame when I recall that at times in my life — my easy life — I've actually been sorry for myself. You too? We've got our nerve, haven't we?"

"At 83 Shaw's mind was perhaps not quite as good as it used to be, but it was still better than anyone else's."

"All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening."

"Well, if I were thus rationed in this article and could have but one adjective for George Gershwin, that adjective would be "ingenuous." Ingenuous at and about his piano. Once an occasional composer named Oscar Levant stood beside that piano while those sure, sinewy, catlike Gershwin fingers beat their brilliant drum-fire—the tumultuous cascade of the "Rhapsody In Blue," the amorous languor of "The Man I Love," the impish glee of "Fascinating Rhythm," the fine, jaunty, dust-spurning scorn of "Strike Up the Band." If the performer was familiar with the work of any other composer, he gave no evidence of it. Levant (who, by the way, makes a fleeting appearance in the new Dashlell Hammett book, under the guise of Levi Oscant) could be heard mutterIng under his breath, "An evening with Gershwin Is a Gershwln evening." "I wonder," said our young composer dreamily, "if my music will be played a hundred years from now." "It certainly will be," said the bitter Levant,"if you are still around.""

"Once in pre-war days, when curiously-bonneted women drivers were familiar sights at the taxi-wheels, I cried out to one in my dismay: "Is there no speed limit in this mad city?" "Oh, yes, monsieur," she answered sweetly over her shoulder, "but no one has ever succeeded in reaching it.""

"By reading a man does as it were antedate his life, and makes himself contemporary with the ages past. And this way of running up beyond one's nativity is much better than Plato's pre-existence, because here a man knows something of the state, and is the wiser for it, which he is not in the other."

"A brave mind is always impregnable. True courage is the result of reasoning."

"Knowledge is the consequence of time, and multitude of days are fittest to teach wisdom."

"To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. How many feasible projects have miscarried by despondency, and been strangled in the birth by a cowardly imagination?"

"Everyone has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases."

"Envy […], like a cold poison, […] benumbs and stupefies. And thus conscious as it were of its own impotence, it folds its arms in despair, and sits cursing in a corner."

"People's opinions of themselves are commonly legible in their countenances."

"A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading. Too much over-charges nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. 'Tis thought and digestion which makes books serviceable, and gives health and vigour to the mind."

"This is brave Bear-Garden language!"