“So as not to disturb me in my little nook behind the biography shelves.”

What is considered sane in writers is made for the rest of the human race.

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

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

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

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.

You don’t have to bother with men, they believe any compliment automatically.

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

I think of a plot, I think of an idea, and then I wonder, How can I get that onto the stage?.

Custard 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.

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

A gentleman … sleeps at his work. That’s what work’s for. Why do you think they have the SILENCE notices in the library?

What 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.

As a writer one is allowed to have conversations with oneself.

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

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

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

I’m learning without having to be behind a desk, so it’s a pretty cool place to be.

Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes.

The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.

See, behind all my tough, rough exterior is basically a marshmallow, maybe a pussycat. But not a wimp!

Every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.

We will win an election when all the seats in the House and Senate and the chair behind the desk in the Oval Office and the whole bench of the Supreme Court are filled with people who wish they weren’t there.

Phil Niekro and his brother were pitching against each other in Atlanta. Their parents were sitting right behind home plate.

The only time it dominates is during a solo, or when we play a low blues and I put figures in behind Eric’s vocals.