When a society has doubts about its future, it tends to produce spokesmen whose main appeal is to the emotions, who argue from intuitions, and whose ….

We shall be judged by what we do, not by how we felt while we were doing it..

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening..

Everyone is vulnerable who is at once gifted and gregarious..

Not content to have the audience in the palm of his hand, he goes one further and clenches his fist..

I hope I never need to believe in God. It would be an awful confession of failure..

A useful word previously unknown to me: 'ergophobia', meaning 'fear or hatred of work'. At last I can define myself in one word..

Among the classic tastes: bread sauce, Nuits St Georges Les Perdrix 1962, Worcestershire sauce, Toblerone and Bovril..

Does the critic wish to influence the kind of film that costs more than £250,000? It is as if he were to send a postcard to General Motors explaining….

A novel is a static thing that one moves through; a play is a dynamic thing that moves past one..

If there's one thing I can't bear, it's people who are wise during the event..

A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car..

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself.

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straigh….

All writing is an antisocial act, since the writer is a man who can speak freely only when alone; to be himself he must lock himself up, to communica….

No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world..

All of life is more or less what the French would call s'imposer, to be able to create one's own terms for what one does..

The buttocks are the most aesthetically pleasing part of the body because they are non-functional..

The man who reacts to the universe with a cry of impotent anguish is acceptable as an artist only if he can persuade us that he has sanely considered….

Any country that has sexual censorship will eventually have political censorship..

How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only b….