John Osborne Quotes (10 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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The Entertainer

John Osborne

John Osborne: 10 quotes4 likes

Famous John Osborne Quotes

“You're hurt because everything is changed. Jimmy is hurt because everything is the same. And neither of you can face it. Something's gone wrong somewhere, hasn't it?”

John Osborne Look Back in Anger

Source: Look Back in Anger

“Why don't we have a little game? Let's pretend that we're human beings, and that we're actually alive.”

John Osborne Look Back in Anger

Source: Look Back in Anger

“Archie Rice: Let me know where you're working tomorrow night and I'll come and see you.”

John Osborne The Entertainer

Number 13; this, the music-hall entertainer Archie Rice's acid farewell to his audience, also appears on Osborne's gravestone https://web.archive.org/web/20071020084223/http://www.shropshiregallery.co.uk/towns/clun/IMG_0277.html. <br class="br">The Entertainer (1957)

“Archie Rice: Don't clap too hard – it's a very old building.”

John Osborne The Entertainer

Number 7; said to have been an old joke in the music-halls at the time the play was written.
The Entertainer (1957)

“Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.”

John Osborne

Quoted in Time magazine, October 31, 1977. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,945814,00.html <br class="br">Also attributed to Christopher Hampton by the Sunday Times Magazine (16 October 1977)

“John Osborne spoke out in a vein of ebullient, free-wheeling rancour that betokened the arrival of something new in the theatre – a sophisticated, articulate lower-class. Most of the critics were offended by Jimmy Porter, but not on account of his anger; a working-class hero is expected to be angry. What nettled them was something quite different: his self-confidence. This was no envious inferior whose insecurity they could pity.”

John Osborne

Kenneth Tynan, Tynan Right and Left (1967) p. 13
Criticism