A novelist who writes nothing for 10 years finds his reputation rising. Because I keep on producing books they say there must be something wrong with this fellow.
J. B. Priestley

Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.
J. B. Priestley

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

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

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

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

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


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

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.
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

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

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

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

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