About J. B. Priestley: John Boynton Priestley was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster.
Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.
We pay when old for the excesses of youth.
The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence.
There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age, I missed it coming and going.
The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.
Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.
I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or do in half a dozen lifetimes.
To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own - this is happiness.
Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.
If we openly declare what is wrong with us, what is our deepest need, then perhaps the death and despair will by degrees disappear.
She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.
Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself.
The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.
Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people.
To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.
The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?
Our trouble is that we drink too much tea. I see in this the slow revenge of the Orient, which has diverted the Yellow River down our throats.
Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.
If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper - write.
In plain words: now that Britain has told the world that she has the H-Bomb she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject in all circumstances nuclear warfare.
