Your Englishman, confronted by something abnormal will always pretend that it isn't there. If, however, you force him to look into it, he'll at once pretend that he sees the object not for what it is but for something that he would like it to be.
James AgateThis was an actress who, for twenty years, had the world at her feet. She kicked it away, and the ball rolled out of her reach.
James AgateA professional is a man who can do his job when he doesn't feel like it. An amateur is a man who can't do his job when he does feel like it.
James AgateTheatre director: a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act.
James AgateNew Year's resolution: To refrain from saying witty, unkind things, unless they are really witty and irreparably damaging.
James AgateI don't know very much but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it…My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.
James AgateThe worst of failure of this kind is that it spoils the market for more competent performers.
James AgateThe maddest phenomenon in this wholly mad world – that the filming or wirelessing of an event, whether it is the Grand National or an attack in force on the Maginot Line, is held to be of more importance than the event itself.
James AgateNew Year's Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.
James AgateI... wonder what it is in the New York air that enables me to sit up till all hours of the night in an atmosphere which in London would make a horse dizzy, but here merely clears the brain.
James AgateLong experience has taught me that in England nobody goes to the theatre unless he or she has bronchitis.
James AgateThe Englishman can get along with sex quite perfectly so long as he can pretend that it isn't sex but something else.
James Agate