"The buttocks are the most aesthetically pleasing part of the body because they are non-functional. Although they conceal an essential orifice, these pointless globes are as near as the human form can ever come to abstract art."

Kenneth Tynan Literature See all quotes by Kenneth Tynan →

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More by Kenneth Tynan

“Welles is at once as abnormal and as natural as Niagara Falls.”

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

“I attacked those Western playwrights who use their influence and affluence to preach to the world the nihilistic doctrine that life is pointless and irrationally destructive, and that there is nothing we can do about it. Until everyone is fed, clothed, housed and taught, until human beings have equal leisure to contemplate the overwhelming fact of mortality, we should not indulge in the luxury of "privileged despair.”

“I doubt if there are very many rational people in this world to whom the word "fuck" is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.”

“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.”

“When you've seen all of Ionesco's plays, I felt at the end, you've seen one of them.”

Resonant Thoughts

"We are going to suffer, I am afraid, terribly in this war, whether we are in it or whether we stand aside. Foreign trade is going to stop, not because trade routes are closed, but because there is no …"

— Edward Grey

Politics1862–1933

#art

"the crime here was a Class 4 felony, the least serious category, which also covers things like falsely pulling a fire alarm in school and “draft card mutilation.” These felonies are routinely resolved…"

— Kim Foxx

Politics1972

#art

"When the U.S. is an active participant in a foreign war, what comes with that is an increased responsibility to try to rescue civilians from the harm done in part by U.S. munitions and U.S. targeting."

— Chris Murphy

Politics1973

#art

"In the long run, will our community not be a stronger, better balanced and more intelligent community when the last artificial disabilities imposed upon women by centuries of custom have been removed?"

— Robert Menzies

Law1894–1978

#art