“Wouldn't it be dreadful to live in a country where they didn't have tea?”

“It's a pity you didn't have a little more brandy. It might have made you more agreeable!”

“A.E. Matthews ambled through This Was a Man like a charming retriever who has buried a bone and can't quite remember where.”

“AMANDA: I think very few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives.”

“Thousands of people have talent. I might as well congratulate you for having eyes in your head. The one and only thing that counts is: Do you have staying power?”

“Having to read footnotes resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love.”

“Act I, Scene 1GARRY: ....My worst defect is that I am apt to worry too much about what people think of me when I'm alive. But I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm changing my methods and you're my first experiment. As a rule, when insufferable young beginners have he impertinence to criticise me, I dismiss the whole thing lightly because I'm embarrassed for them and consider it not quite fair game to puncture their inflated egos too sharply. But this time my highbrow young friend you're going to get it in the neck. To begin with your play is not a play at all. It's a meaningless jumble of adolescent, pseudo intellectual poppycock. And you yourself wouldn't be here at all if I hadn't been bloody fool enough to pick up the telephone when my secretary wasn't looking. Now that you are here, however, I would like to tell you this. If you wish to be a playwright you just leave the theater of to-morrow to take care of itself. Go and get yourself a job as a butler in a repertory company if they'll have you. Learn from the ground up how plays are constructed and what is actable and what isn't. Then sit down and write at least twenty plays one after the other, and if you can manage to get the twenty-first produced for a Sunday night performance you'll be damned lucky!ROLAND (hypnotised): I'd no idea you were like this. You're wonderful!”