I'm not so sure it's so civilized to be civilized all the time.

I have noticed that in plays where the characters on stage laugh a great deal, the people out front laugh very little.

You can't sleep until noon with the proper elan unless you have some legitimate reason for staying up until three (parties don't count).

... it's impossible to register any emotion without using some muscle which, in time, will produce a wrinkle. ... By the time she is thirty, a starlet has been carefully taught to smile like a dead halibut. The eyes widen, the mouth drops open, but the eye muscles are never involved.

I'm not so sure it's so civilized to be civilized all the time.

I think if you can write a play, or produce a play, the first step toward success [is] if people don't want to kill themselves in the lobby. Now there must be four or five other steps, but that's the first.

While in some quarters it is felt that the critic is just a necessary evil, most serious-minded, decent, talented theater people agree that the critic is an unnecessary evil.