George Jean Nathan
There is no legimate actor who can resist the powerful lure of the movies. It isn't the money that fetches him. It isn't the great publicity. It is simply this: the movies enable an actor to look at himself.Collection: Powerful
One does not go to the theater to see life and nature; one goes to see the particular way in which life and nature happen to look to a cultivated, imaginative and entertaining man who happens, in turn, to be a playwright.Collection: Men
Shaw writes plays for the ages, the ages between five and twelve.Collection: Writing
The dramatic critic who is without prejudice is on the plane with the general who does not believe in taking human life.Collection: Believe
Impersonal criticism?is like an impersonal fist fight or an impersonal marriage, and as successful.Collection: Fighting
The Russian dramatist is one who, walking through a cemetery, does not see the flowers on the graves. The American dramatist . . . Does not see the graves under the flowers.Collection: Flower
The bachelors admired freedom is often a yoke, for the freer a man is to himself the greater slave he often is to the whims of others.Collection: Men
Marriage is based on the theory that when a man discovers a brand of beer exactly to his taste, he should at once throw up his job and go to work inthe brewery.Collection: Marriage
Sex touches the heavens only when it simultaneously touches the gutter and the mud.Collection: Sex
What passes for woman's intuition is more often intrinsically nothing more than man's transparency.Collection: Men
There is something distinguished about even his failures; they sink not trivially, but with a certain air of majesty, like a great ship, its flags flying, full of holes.Collection: Air
A man may be said to love most truly that woman in whose company he can feel drowsy in comfort.Collection: Men
Musicals are to the theater what wines are to a substantial dinner.Collection: Wine
Opening Night: The night before the play is ready to open.Collection: Night