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

If you are flattering a woman, it pays to be a little more subtle.

A 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?

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.

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

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

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.

Some people take defeat and losses a certain way. You see how some fighters take losses.

Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.

Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.

There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune; it is a certain air which distinguishes us, and seems to destine us for great things; it is a price which we imperceptibly set upon ourselves.

Certainly, in the course of time, the splendid things will separate from the hateful.

Those who invoke history will certainly be heard by history. And they will have to accept its verdict.

If we have white persons in the March, we are certain to have trouble with the Communists, and it may not be viewed as a true expression of the Negro’s protest.

I certainly would not like to end up in a tie-up with Ms. Rousey.