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Terence Rattigan Quotes

Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan, CBE was a British dramatist. He was one of England's most popular mid 20th century dramatists. His plays are typically set in an upper-middle-class background. He wrote The Winslow Boy , The Browning Version , The Deep Blue Sea and Separate Tables , among many others.

A troubled homosexual, who saw himself as an outsider, his plays centred on issues of sexual frustration, failed relationships, and a world of repression and reticence. Wikipedia  

✵ 10. June 1911 – 30. November 1977
Terence Rattigan photo

Works

In Praise of Love
In Praise of Love
Terence Rattigan
French Without Tears
French Without Tears
Terence Rattigan
Terence Rattigan: 5   quotes 0   likes

Famous Terence Rattigan Quotes

“A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.”

Terence Rattigan

The New York Journal-American, October 29, 1956.

“Do you know what le vice Anglais – the English vice – really is? Not flagellation, not pederasty – whatever the French believe it to be. It's our refusal to admit to our emotions. We think they demean us, I suppose.”

Terence Rattigan In Praise of Love

In Praise of Love, Act II. (1973).

“Kenneth: If you’re so hot, you'd better tell me how to say she has ideas above her station.
Brian: Oh, yes, I forgot. It's fairly easy, old boy. Elle a des idées au-dessus de sa gare.”

Terence Rattigan French Without Tears

French Without Tears, Act I. (1937).

“Let us invent a character, a nice respectable, middle-class, middle-aged, maiden lady, with time on her hands and the money to help her pass it. She enjoys pictures, books, music, and the theatre and though to none of these arts (or rather, for consistency's sake, to none of these three arts and the one craft) does she bring much knowledge or discernment, at least, as she is apt to tell her cronies, she "does know what she likes."”

Terence Rattigan

Let us call her Aunt Edna.
The Collected Plays of Terence Rattigan (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953) vol. 1, p. xi.

“When you're between any kind of devil and the deep blue sea, the deep blue sea sometimes looks very inviting.”

Terence Rattigan

The Deep Blue Sea, Act I. (1952).

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