Tynan Quotes

The Irish always jest even though they jest with tears. ~ Katharine Tynan

Drawbacks are good when you are on holiday. If the holiday were too good you might not want to go home again ... ~ Katharine Tynan

Pearl is a disease of oysters. Levant is a disease of Hollywood. ~ Kenneth Tynan

Any country that has sexual censorship will eventually have political censorship. ~ Kenneth Tynan

You know you're a bookaholic when you take a book off your shelf and have to go hunting to find a spot for it when you're done. ~ Tynan

The only other white people we saw during the three days we stayed there were a German couple intent on taking pictures of their stuffed sheep in a variety of locations around the world. ~ Tynan

The unique thing about Margaret Rutherford is that she can act with her chin alone. Among its many moods I especially cherish the chin commanding, the chin in doubt, and the chin at bay. ~ Kenneth Tynan

Irish people have a trick of over-statement, at which one ceases to wince as one grows older. ~ Katharine Tynan

Pornography is writing that seeks primarily, even exclusively, to bring about sexual stimulation. This can be done crudely or delicately. In the former case it would be bad literature; in the latter good. ~ Kenneth Tynan

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. ~ Malachy McCourt

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. ~ Kenneth Tynan

Mistakes will happen, but the most important thing is how you react to them. ~ Tynan

I have often heard it said that the Irish are too ready to forgive. It is a noble failing. ~ Katharine Tynan

Even though I didn't originally buy it for you, because like an idiot I avoided your feelings like the plague, I hadn't noticed until now that it wasn't the lucky price that had drawn me to it, but the colour of it." I heaved a deep breath, preparing myself. I remembered the last time I had said something so cheesy, and how he had laughed but I continued anyway, before my shyness could take over.

"Hurry up, before you start regretting." The taxi man had said. And I did.

I looked him square in the eyes, blushing so furiously I was sure even my dark skin wouldn't hide it. He met my gaze, somewhat shyly, which was a rare sight. "So I've decided to give this necklace to you as a symbol for what I realised today. The colour is green, like your… uh, like your eyes… and your eyes are my kryptonite." I mumbled, looking at him into the eyes right until the end, until his face turned completely red and his jaw dropping so low I was sure it almost hit the counter, his eyes sparkling, wide with shock. ~ Anja Owona Okoa

January has only one thing to be said for it: it is followed by February. Nothing so well becomes its passing. ~ Katharine Tynan

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding. ~ Kenneth Tynan

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

Not content to have the audience in the palm of his hand, he goes one further and clinches his fist. ~ Kenneth Tynan

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. ~ Kenneth Tynan

I hope I never need to believe in God. It would be an awful confession of failure. ~ Kenneth Tynan

Write a prescribed amount every day. I find it easiest to assign myself to write a single blog post every day, ~ Tynan

Everyone is vulnerable who is at once gifted and gregarious. ~ Kenneth Tynan

Does the critic wish to influence the kind of film that costs more than £250,000? It is as if he were to send a postcard to General Motors explaining that he would like them to make a raft next year, or a helicopter, instead of a car. ~ Kenneth Tynan

O, the red rose may be fair, And the lily statelier; But my shamrock, one in three Takes the very heart of me! ~ Katharine Tynan

In most writers, style is a welcome, an invitation, a letting down of the drawbridge between the artist and the world. Shaw had no time for such ruses. Unlike most of his countrymen, he abominated charm, which he regarded as evidence of chronic temperamental weakness. ~ Kenneth Tynan

If there's one thing I can't bear, it's people who are wise during the event. ~ Kenneth Tynan

A good many inconveniences attend playgoing in any large city, but the greatest of them is usually the play itself. ~ Kenneth Tynan

When you don't get rid of things you aren't using, you are blinding yourself to a critical part of the consumer experience: what happens to things when you're done with them. When you have the habit of periodically getting rid of things you aren't using anymore, your brain begins to create links between the beginning (buying) and the end (selling) of all of your stuff. ~ Tynan

Judge and prosecutor had hammered it home that Lady Chatterly was an immoral woman, that she had had sexual relations before marriage, that she had committed adultery under her husband's roof; as if these charges somehow disqualified her from participation in serious literature. Indeed, there were long periods of the trial during which an outsider might well have assumed that a divorce case was being heard. ~ Kenneth Tynan

I attacked those Western playwrights who use their influence and affluence to preach to the world the nihilistic doctrine that life is pointless and irrationally destructive, and that there is nothing we can do about it. Until everyone is fed, clothed, housed and taught, until human beings have equal leisure to contemplate the overwhelming fact of mortality, we should not (I argued) indulge in the luxury of privileged despair. ~ Kenneth Tynan

Show me a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a Peeping Tom and I will show you the making of a dramatist. ~ Kenneth Tynan

What, when drunk, one sees in other women, one sees in Garbo sober. ~ Kenneth Tynan

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening. ~ Kenneth Tynan

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. ~ Kenneth Tynan

All writing is an antisocial act, since the writer is a man who can speak freely only when alone; to be himself he must lock himself up, to communicate he must cut himself off from all communication; and in this there is something always a little mad. ~ Kenneth Tynan

The trouble with the Irish question always has been that it was an English question. ~ Katharine Tynan

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. ~ Kenneth Tynan

Drama criticism ... is a self-knowing account of the way in which one's consciousness has been modified during an evening at the theatre. ~ Kenneth Tynan

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

The life in which nothing happens goes the fastest, because it has no landmarks. ~ Katharine Tynan

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

The scent of the leather and the feel of the cold steel transported her back in time. "But Daddy, why can't I have a sword and a scabbard? Dillon and Tynan have one and look, I can lift it above my head, too." Kylah chuckled because she hadn't lifted it above her head; she'd barely lifted the broadsword off the floor. But Cearnach was always supportive. He'd told her, "Someday, little one… someday you will be a great warrior just like your brothers. ~ Brynn Myers

Religion dies hard in the Irish. ~ Katharine Tynan

A useful word previously unknown to me: 'ergophobia', meaning 'fear or hatred of work'. At last I can define myself in one word. ~ Kenneth Tynan

The way with Ireland is that no sooner do you get away from her than the golden mists begin to close about her, and she lies, an Island of the Blest, something enchanted in our dreams. When you come back you may think you are disillusioned, but you know well that the fairy mists will begin to gather about her once more. ~ Katharine Tynan

The sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic. ~ Kenneth Tynan

Among the classic tastes: bread sauce, Nuits St Georges Les Perdrix 1962, Worcestershire sauce, Toblerone and Bovril. ~ Kenneth Tynan

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

I do not see the E.E.C. [European Economic Community] as a great love affair. It's more like nine middle aged couples with failing marriages meeting at a Brussels hotel for a group grope. ~ Kenneth Tynan

To be a saint does not exclude fine dresses nor a beautiful house. ~ Katharine Tynan

The kind need kindness most of all. ~ Katharine Tynan

Dichotomy = operation performed on lesbians to make them normal. ~ Kenneth Tynan

A villain who shares one's guilt is inevitably more attractive than a hero convinced of one's innocence. ~ Kenneth Tynan

There, standing at the piano, was the original good time who had been had by all. ~ Kenneth Tynan

Often our bad moments are self-propelled ... And the drama is almost exclusively within our heads and hearts. ~ Katharine Tynan