Quotes from Kenneth Tynan

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

Pearl is a disease of oysters. Levant is a disease of Hollywood.

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

The greatest films are those which show how society shapes man. The greatest plays are those which show how man shapes society.

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.

A city whose living immediacy is so urgent that when I am in it I lose all sense of the past.

There, standing at the piano, was the original good time who had been had by all.

I do not see the E.E.C. [European Economic Community] as a great love affair. It's more like nine middle aged couples with failing marriages meeting at a Brussels hotel for a group grope.

The sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic.

I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger.

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.

Show me a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a peeping Tom and I will show you the makings of a dramatist.

What, when drunk, one sees in other women, one sees in Garbo sober.

At its best drama delightfully informs.. This may be a paraphrase but I think it captures the essence of what he said; provided he did say it and I'm not imagining things.

A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you're keeping.

It is Ireland's sacred duty to send over, every few years, a playwright to save the English theater from inarticulate glumness.

Coming to New York from the muted mistiness of London, as I regularly do, is like travelling from a monochrome antique shop to a technicolor bazaar.

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 by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.

A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping.

Buscamos los dientes que coinciden con nuestras heridas.

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

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.

The unique thing about Margaret Rutherford is that she can act with her chin alone. Among its many moods I especially cherish the chin commanding, the chin in doubt, and the chin at bay.

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