James Agate Quotes (13 Quotes)


    Theatre director: a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act.

    Long experience has taught me that in England nobody goes to the theatre unless he or she has bronchitis.

    Your Englishman, confronted by something abnormal will always pretend that it isn't there. If, however, you force him to look into it, he'll at once pretend that he sees the object not for what it is but for something that he would like it to be. 'The Selective Ego,' Ego, entry for 14 Oct 1932.

    I don't know very much, but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it. I know what I think about an actor or an actress, and am not interested in what anybody else thinks.

    The worst of failure of this kind is that it spoils the market for more competent performers.


    The Englishman can get along with sex quite perfectly so long as he can pretend that it isn't sex but something else.

    Don't pity me now, don't pity me never; I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever.

    New Year's Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.

    My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.

    The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.

    I wonder what it is in the New York air that enables me to sit up till all hours of the night in an atmosphere which in London would make a horse dizzy, but here merely clears the brain

    Shaw's plays are the price we pay for Shaw's prefaces.

    Intelligence I was asked tonight why I refuse to have truck with intellectuals after business hours. But of course I won t. 1. I am not an intellectual. Two minutes talk with Aldous Huxley, William Glock, or any of the New Statesman crowd would expose me utterly. 2. I am too tired after my day's work to man the intellectual palisade. 3. When my work is finished I want to eat, drink, smoke, and relax. 4. I don't know very much, but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it. I know what I think about an actor or an actress, and am not interested in what anybody else thinks. My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.


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