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The man who reacts to the universe with a cry of impotent anguish is acceptable as an artist only if he can persuade us that he has sanely considered the other possible reactions and found them inadequate.

Kenneth Tynan

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Kenneth Tynan
Age: 53 †
Born: 1927
Born: April 2
Died: 1980
Died: July 26
Actor
Critic
Diarist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Theatre Critic
Writer
Birmingham
West Midlands
Kenneth Peacock Tynan
Ken Tynan
Considered
Sanely
Cry
Reacts
Possible
Impotent
Universe
Persuade
Artist
Inadequate
Found
Anguish
Men
Acceptable
Reactions

More quotes by Kenneth Tynan

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A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.
Kenneth Tynan
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When a society has doubts about its future, it tends to produce spokesmen whose main appeal is to the emotions, who argue from intuitions, and whose claim to be truth-bearers rests solely on intense personal feeling.
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Dichotomy = operation performed on lesbians to make them normal.
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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
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The vengeful hag is played by Ingrid Bergman, which is like casting Eleanor Roosevelt as Lizzie Borden.
Kenneth Tynan
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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
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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
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Show me a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a Peeping Tom and I will show you the making of a dramatist.
Kenneth Tynan
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There, standing at the piano, was the original good time who had been had by all.
Kenneth Tynan
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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
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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
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It is Ireland's sacred duty to send over, every few years, a playwright to save the English theater from inarticulate glumness.
Kenneth Tynan
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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
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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
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I hope I never need to believe in God. It would be an awful confession of failure.
Kenneth Tynan
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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
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Pearl is a disease of oysters. Levant is a disease of Hollywood.
Kenneth Tynan
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Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself
Kenneth Tynan
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No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.
Kenneth Tynan
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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