Kenneth Tynan > Quotes

“A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car”
― Kenneth Tynan

“A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you're keeping.”
― Kenneth Tynan

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

“It is Ireland's sacred duty to send over, every few years, a playwright to save the English theater from inarticulate glumness.”
― 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 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, The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan

“Buscamos los dientes que coinciden con nuestras heridas.”
― Kenneth Tynan

“With their pride of controlled selfhood, their inner discipline, such players made us a little ashamed of our glad acceptance of democratic values. We had been content to think of our time as the age of the little man. By the light shed from these giant contrasts, we felt (but never, I am afraid, admitted) that ours was the age of the dwarf. Such adventures in uniqueness were rare beyond the stage door.”
― Kenneth Tynan, He That Plays the King: A View of the Theatre

“A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.”
― Kenneth Tynan

“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.”
― Kenneth Tynan

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