Alan Ayckbourn Quotes

#1. Plays by Alan Ayckbourn have been attracting larger audiences in the regional theatres than those of Shakespeare.

Alan Ayckbourn

#2. I fell in love with Alan Ayckbourn the day I met him and, starting with 'The Norman Conquests,' went on to do eight plays with him. He tells you just what you want to know and has a brilliant way of solving problems.

Michael Gambon

#3. If you are flattering a woman, it pays to be a little more subtle. You don't have to bother with men, they believe any compliment automatically.

Alan Ayckbourn

#4. Fire can warm or consume,
water can quench or drown,
wind can caress or cut.
And so it is with human relationshps;
we can both create and destroy,
nurture and terrorize,
traumatize and heal each other

Bruce D. Perry

#5. Of course in show business there are two ways to play it and I am not politically correct so I am not going to get endorsements or anything like that.

Artie Lange

#6. Salad, I can't bear salad. It grows while you're eating it, you know.

Alan Ayckbourn

#7. Cats names are more for human benefit. They give one a certain degree more confidence that the animal belongs to you.

Alan Ayckbourn

#8. There are very few people on top of life, and the rest of us don't like them very much.

Alan Ayckbourn

#9. Few women care to be laughed at and men not at all, except for large sums of money.

Alan Ayckbourn

#10. Everyone is his or her own messiah.

James Edwin Gunn

#11. A comedy is just a tragedy interrupted, I once said. Do you finish with the kiss or when she opens her eyes to tell him she loves him and sees blonde hairs on his collar?

Alan Ayckbourn

#12. i feel the spring breeze ruffling
the new-hatched damp of my unfurling
feathers; i see with eyes bleary from egg-dark
the shell clinging sticky to my screaming
beak.

Beth Morey

#13. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans - my fellow veterans - whose future you stole,

Thomas Young

#14. Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of men,
the Good and the Bad.
But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

David Hume

#15. As a writer one is allowed to have conversations with oneself. What is considered sane in writers is made for the rest of the human race.

Alan Ayckbourn

#16. Happiness is the best facelift.

Joni Mitchell

#17. He really is terribly heavy going. Like running up hill in roller skates.

Alan Ayckbourn

#18. The darker the subject, the more light you must try to shed on the matter. And vice versa.

Alan Ayckbourn

#19. I think of a plot, I think of an idea, and then I wonder, How can I get that onto the stage? ... Whatever devices you use should always be there to serve the theme. If the theme has been overtaken by the device, then something's wrong.

Alan Ayckbourn

#20. There is a school of thought that believes that sleep is for the night. You appear to be out to disprove them.

Alan Ayckbourn

#21. A gentleman ... sleeps at his work. That's what work's for. Why do you think they have the SILENCE notices in the library? So as not to disturb me in my little nook behind the biography shelves.

Alan Ayckbourn

#22. There should be a pathway to citizenship - not a special pathway and not no pathway.

Jason Chaffetz