Salad, I can’t bear salad. It grows while you’re eating it, you know.
ALAN AYCKBOURNSalad, I can’t bear salad. It grows while you’re eating it, you know.
ALAN AYCKBOURNHe really is terribly heavy going. Like running up hill in roller skates.
ALAN AYCKBOURNA gentleman … sleeps at his work. That’s what work’s for. Why do you think they have the SILENCE notices in the library?
ALAN AYCKBOURNPlays by Alan Ayckbourn have been attracting larger audiences in the regional theatres than those of Shakespeare.
ALAN AYCKBOURNYou don’t have to bother with men, they believe any compliment automatically.
ALAN AYCKBOURNWhat I find interesting is how close you can run the laughter along the seam of seriousness, and occasionally cross it, so that half the house genuinely doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
ALAN AYCKBOURNIf you are flattering a woman, it pays to be a little more subtle.
ALAN AYCKBOURNAs a writer one is allowed to have conversations with oneself.
ALAN AYCKBOURNSo as not to disturb me in my little nook behind the biography shelves.
ALAN AYCKBOURNCustard pie humour is fairly universal, but at the other end, which I’m more interested in, there’s the humour that hovers on the darkness, that walks in the shadow of something else, not always that obvious.
ALAN AYCKBOURNFew women care to be laughed at and men not at all, except for large sums of money.
ALAN AYCKBOURNThere are very few people on top of life, and the rest of us don’t like them very much.
ALAN AYCKBOURNA 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 AYCKBOURNThe darker the subject, the more light you must try to shed on the matter. And vice versa.
ALAN AYCKBOURNCats names are more for human benefit. They give one a certain degree more confidence that the animal belongs to you.
ALAN AYCKBOURNI think of a plot, I think of an idea, and then I wonder, How can I get that onto the stage?.
ALAN AYCKBOURN