Quotes from Kenneth Tynan


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Pearl is a disease of oysters. Levant is a disease of Hollywood.


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.


A city whose living immediacy is so urgent that when I am in it I lose all sense of the past.


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


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


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


A novel is a static thing that one moves through; a play is a dynamic thing that moves past one.


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


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


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.