Joe Orton Quotes

Prentice: My nerves are on edge.
Rance: You should consult a qualified psychiatrist.
Prentice: I am a qualified psychiatrist.
Rance: You're a fool. That isn't quite the same thing. Though, in your case, the two may have much in common.

Fay: What will you do when you're old?
Hal: I shall die.
Fay: I see you're determined to run the gamut of all experience.

Truscott: How dare you involve me in a situation for which no memo has been issued.

Hal: God is a gentleman. He prefers blondes.

With insanity, as with vomit, it is the passerby who receives the inconvenience.

Fay: Your explanation had the ring of truth about it.. Naturally I disbelieved every word.

McLeavy: I'm innocent. (A little unsure of himself, the beginnings of panic) Doesn't that mean anything to you?

Prentice: What this young woman claims is a tissue of lies.
Match: This is a boy, sir. Not a girl. If you're baffled by the difference it might be as well to approach both with caution.

Rance: Were your relations with your secretary normal?
Prentice: Yes.
Rance: Well, Prentice, your private life is your own affair. I find it shocking none the less.

Prentice: It's a fascinating theory, sir, and cleverly put together. Does it tie in with known facts?
Rance: That need not cause us undue anxiety. Civilizations have been founded and maintained on theories which refused to obey facts.

Sir — In finding so much to praise in Entertaining Mr. Sloane, which seems to be nothing more than a highly sensationalized, lurid, crude and over-dramatised picture of life at its lowest, surely your dramatic critic has taken leave of his senses.<p>The effect this nauseating work had on me was to make we want to fill my lungs with some fresh, wholesome Leicester Square air. A distinguished critic, if I quote him correctly, felt the sensation of snakes crawling around his ankles while watching it.<p>Yours truly,<p>Peter Pinnell

On our way home we were waiting for the bus when a very fat, pompous-looking woman reeled out of a pub shouting, "Melancholia? Ad nauseam."

Prentice: This appalling situation is the result of my lax moral code. It's clean living and Teach Yourself Woodwork for me from now on!

Prentice: Unnatural vice can ruin a man.
Rance: Ruin follows the accusation not the vice.

Mrs Prentice: Have you taken up transvestism? I'd no idea our marriage teetered on the edge of fashion.