Kenneth Tynan

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

A novel is a static thing that one moves through; a play is a dynamic thing that moves past one.

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