Alan Ayckbourn Quotations

Plays by Alan Ayckbourn have been attracting larger audiences in the regional theatres than those of Shakespeare.

A comedy is just a tragedy interrupted, I once said. Do you finish with the kiss or when she opens her eyes to tell him she loves him and sees blonde hairs on his collar?

Salad, I can't bear salad. It grows while you're eating it, you know.

He really is terribly heavy going. Like running up hill in roller skates.

What I find interesting is how close you can run the laughter along the seam of seriousness, and occasionally cross it, so that half the house genuinely doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. Custard pie humour is fairly universal, but at the other end, which I'm more interested in, there's the humour that hovers on the darkness, that walks in the shadow of something else, not always that obvious.

Cats names are more for human benefit. They give one a certain degree more confidence that the animal belongs to you.

There is a school of thought that believes that sleep is for the night. You appear to be out to disprove them.

There are very few people on top of life, and the rest of us don't like them very much.

The darker the subject, the more light you must try to shed on the matter. And vice versa.

A gentleman ... sleeps at his work. That's what work's for. Why do you think they have the SILENCE notices in the library? So as not to disturb me in my little nook behind the biography shelves.