J. B. Priestley Quotes

• There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent.

  J. B. Priestley

• The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.

  J. B. Priestley

• The greatest writers of this age… are aware of the mystery of our existence.

  J. B. Priestley

• The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.

  J. B. Priestley

• 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?

  J. B. Priestley

• She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.

  J. B. Priestley

• Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they’re growing.

  J. B. Priestley

• Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.

  J. B. Priestley

• 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.

  J. B. Priestley

• Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.

  J. B. Priestley

• 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.

  J. B. Priestley

• 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.

  J. B. Priestley

• 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.

  J. B. Priestley

• If we openly declare what is wrong with us, what is our deepest need, then perhaps the death and despair will by degrees disappear.

  J. B. Priestley

• 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.

  J. B. Priestley

• I know only two words of American slang, ‘swell’ and ‘lousy’. I think ‘swell’ is lousy, but ‘lousy’ is swell.

  J. B. Priestley

• I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.

  J. B. Priestley

• Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself – with a smile.

  J. B. Priestley

• Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.

  J. B. Priestley

• Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people.

  J. B. Priestley

J. B. Priestley (64)

Birth:	13th September, 1894
Death:	14th August, 1984
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Novelist, Playwright, Screenwriter

About

John Boynton Priestley was born in Manningham, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. He was an English novelist, playwright and screenwriter. He studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He wrote several novels include: Benighted, The Good Companions(won-James Tait Black Memorial Prize), Angel Pavement, Let the People Sing, Bright Day, Jenny Villiers, and The Magicians. He wrote several plays include: Dangerous Corner, Laburnum Grove, Eden End, Time and the Conways, I Have Been Here Before, When We Are Married, Johnson Over Jordan, and An Inspector Calls. He wrote several films include: The Old Dark House, Jamaica Inn, They Came to a City, The Foreman Went to France, Last Holiday, Look Up and Laugh, and Britain at Bay. The University of Bradford awarded Priestley the title of honorary Doctor of Letters in 1970, and he was awarded the Freedom of the City of Bradford in 1973.

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