When people shake their heads because we are living in a restless age, ask them how they would like to life in a stationary one, and do without change

It is always necessary to overstate a cast startlingly to make people sit up and listen to it, and to frighten them into acting on it.

I do not want actors and actresses to understand my plays. That is not necessary. If they will only pronounce the correct sounds I can guarantee the results.

The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist

Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat.

It has taken me nearly twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public; and I am not sure that I am not still regarded as a suspicious character in some quarters.

Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.