"A good many inconveniences attend playgoing in any large city, but the greatest of them is usually the play itself."

Kenneth Tynan Literature See all quotes by Kenneth Tynan →

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“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

"Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance."

— Giambattista Vico

Philosophy1668–1744

#friendship

"That night I made copies of all the documents with shaking hands and gave them to a friend with contacts in the British secret services. I had a bitter taste in my mouth."

— Jani Allan

Journalism1952–2023

#friendship

"In a world, man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines himself."

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Philosophy1905–1980

#friendship

"Thank you all very much for your hospitality. We've just had a wide-ranging discussions on the matter at hand. Like the good folks standing with me, the American people were appalled and outraged at l…"

— George W. Bush

Politics1824–1900

#faith