James Agate

Don't pity me now, don't pity me never; I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever.

My mind is not a bed to be made and remade.

The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.

The worst of failure of this kind is that it spoils the market for more competent performers.

Long experience has taught me that in England nobody goes to the theatre unless he or she has bronchitis.

Theatre director: a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act.

New Year's Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.

I don't know very much, but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it. I know what I think about an actor or an actress, and am not interested in what anybody else thinks.

The Englishman can get along with sex quite perfectly so long as he can pretend that it isn't sex but something else.

Your Englishman, confronted by something abnormal will always pretend that it isn't there. If, however, you force him to look into it, he'll at once pretend that he sees the object not for what it is but for something that he would like it to be. "The Selective Ego," Ego, entry for 14 Oct 1932.