A Little Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations

Augusto Boal 1931–2009 Brazilian theatre director

Shut up, Arnold, or I’ll direct this play the way you wrote it!

John Dexter 1925–90 English director, to the playwright Arnold Wesker

after a play about Napoleon had failed:

Never, never, will I do another play where a guy writes with a feather.

Max Gordon 1892–1978 American Broadway producer

The difficulty about a theatre job is that it interferes with party-going.

Barry Humphries 1934– Australian actor and writer

Satire is what closes Saturday night.

George S. Kaufman 1889–1961 American dramatist

stage direction to any new cast he worked with:

Stand upstage of me and do your worst.

Edmund Kean c.1787–1833 English actor

A play in which nothing happens, twice.

Vivian Mercier 1919–89 Irish literary historian, reviewing Waiting for Godot

Don’t clap too hard—it’s a very old building.

John Osborne 1929–94 English dramatist

It is better to have written a damned play, than no play at all—it snatches a man from obscurity.

Frederic Reynolds 1764–1841 English dramatist

You’ve got to perform in a role hundreds of times. In keeping it fresh one can become a large, madly humming, demented refrigerator.

Ralph Richardson 1902–83 English actor

In the old days, you went from ingénue to old bag with a long stretch of unemployment in between.

Julie Walters 1950– British actress

Musical comedy is the Irish stew of drama. Anything may be put into it, with the certainty that it will improve the general effect.

P. G. Wodehouse 1881–1975 English-born writer

Time

This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

Douglas Adams 1952–2001 English science fiction writer

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Douglas Adams 1952–2001 English science fiction writer

I do love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go past.

Douglas Adams 1952–2001 English science fiction writer

And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look and feel like shit.

Martin Amis 1949– English novelist

on receiving an invitation for 9 a.m.:

Oh, are there two nine o’clocks in the day?

Tallulah Bankhead 1903–68 American actress

to an effusive greeting ‘I haven’t seen you for 41 years’:

I thought I told you to wait in the car.

Tallulah Bankhead 1903–68 American actress

VLADIMIR: That passed the time.

ESTRAGON: It would have passed in any case.

VLADIMIR: Yes, but not so rapidly.

Samuel Beckett 1906–89 Irish dramatist, novelist, and poet

Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.

Shirley Conran 1932– English writer

An hour sitting with a pretty girl on a park bench passes like a minute, but a minute sitting on a hot stove seems like an hour.

Albert Einstein 1879–1955 German-born theoretical physicist, explaining relativity

We have passed a lot of water since then.

Sam Goldwyn 1882–1974 American film producer

Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not.

Ursula K. Le Guin 1929–2018 American writer

Time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

C. Northcote Parkinson 1909–93 English writer

Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–80 French philosopher

Eternity’s a terrible thought. I mean, where’s it all going to end?

Tom Stoppard 1937– British dramatist

to a man in the street, carrying a grandfather clock:

My poor fellow, why not carry a watch?

Herbert Beerbohm Tree 1852–1917 English actor-manager

Towns and Cities

I passed through Glasgow on my way here and couldn’t help noticing how different it was from Venice.

Raymond Asquith 1878–1916 English lawyer

One has no great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.

Jane Austen 1775–1817 English novelist

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!

It isn’t fit for humans now.

John Betjeman 1906–84 English poet

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.

Truman Capote 1924–84 American writer

A big hard-boiled city with no more personality than a paper cup.

Raymond Chandler 1888–1959 American writer, of Los Angeles

This is Soho, where anything goes, just make sure it’s not your wallet.

Len Deighton 1929– English writer

Last week, I went to Philadelphia, but it was closed.

W. C. Fields 1880–1946 American humorist