Kenneth Tynan Quotes

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

A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you're keeping.

Coming to New York from the muted mistiness of London, as I regularly do, is like travelling from a monochrome antique shop to a technicolor bazaar.

It is Ireland's sacred duty to send over, every few years, a playwright to save the English theater from inarticulate glumness.

How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.

Kenneth Tynan once said that the only people who can do Russian drama, outside of the Russians themselves, are the Irish. I presume that's because we are somewhat manic in the mood department. It's no bother to soar from the darkest depths to the mountaintops of delight, with the heart borne by all of that which is alive and singing. It's even less bother to swan-dive into the pits of despair and total hopelessness, with the realization that it's no use being Irish unless you know the world is eventually going to break your heart.

A neurosis is a secret that you don’t know you are keeping.

I see in the papers that the singer, Frank Ifield, popular in the fifties, is planning a comeback. I remember reviewing his debut at the Palladium under the insane misapprehension that he was blind. (I had him confused with a blind vocalist who bore a similar name.) I watched agape with admiration while he strolled around the stage with every appearance of knowing where he was going, and I burst into spontaneous applause as he strode down to within a foot of the orchestra pit without the least sign of fear. By the end of his act I was misty with tears at the thought of his courage. I often wonder what he thought when he read the review in which I congratulated him on the gallantry with which he had overcome the handicap of sightlessness.

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

I think [someone else] wrote Shakespeare. If you don't, there are some awfully funny coincidences to explain away.” Orson Welles, in an interview with theater critic Kenneth Tynan, related in Persona Grata, by Cecil Beaton and Kenneth Tynan, Winthrop, New York, 1953.

Buscamos los dientes que coinciden con nuestras heridas.

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