J. B. Priestley

A novelist who writes nothing for 10 years finds his reputation rising. Because I keep on producing books they say there must be something wrong with this fellow.

There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age, I missed it coming and going.

I know only two words of American slang, 'swell' and 'lousy'. I think 'swell' is lousy, but 'lousy' is swell.

The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence.

Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.

Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.

Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself.

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

In plain words: now that Britain has told the world that she has the H-Bomb she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject in all circumstances nuclear warfare.

Western man is schizophrenic.

We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.

As we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief that can rise to delight that thank Heaven nobody is reporting in this fashion on us.

Like its politicians and its war, society has the teenagers it deserves.

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.

Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.

There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent.

If we openly declare what is wrong with us, what is our deepest need, then perhaps the death and despair will by degrees disappear.

I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or do in half a dozen lifetimes.

The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.

To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own - this is happiness.