A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.

The greatest films are those which show how society shapes man. The greatest plays are those which show how man shapes society.

The vengeful hag is played by Ingrid Bergman, which is like casting Eleanor Roosevelt as Lizzie Borden.

A novel is a static thing that one moves through; a play is a dynamic thing that moves past one.

Art and ideology often interact on each other; but the plain fact is that both spring from a common source. Both draw on human experience to explain mankind to itself; both attempt, in very different ways, to assemble coherence from seemingly unrelated phenomena; both stand guard for us against chaos.

William Congreve is the only sophisticated playwright England has produced; and like Shaw, Sheridan, and Wilde, his nearest rivals, he was brought up in Ireland.

A city whose living immediacy is so urgent that when I am in it I lose all sense of the past.