The Ever-Quotable Shaw
“I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.”
The 50-odd plays of George Bernard Shaw represent only a fraction of his life’s printed output. In his 96 years he wrote five novels, countless theatrical reviews, innumerable political essays, pamphlets, and speeches, and (brace yourself) something approaching a quarter million letters, telegrams, and postcards. Little wonder then, that there is no better authority on Shaw’s philosophy, humor, ideas, expectations, and frustrations than . . . Shaw himself.
“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”
On Becoming a Playwright:
“I turned my hand to playwriting when a great deal of talk about “the New Drama” followed by the actual establishment of a “New” theatre (The Independent) threatened to end in the humiliating discovery that the New Drama, in England at least, was a figment of the revolutionary imagination. I had rashly taken up the case, and rather than let it collapse, I manufactured the evidence.”
“My reputation grows with every failure.”
“My whole secret is that I have got clean through the old categories of good and evil, and no longer use them, even for dramatic effect.”
“A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows”
Shaw apparently believed he was his own best authority. In “The Playwright on His First Play” (1893), he took the liberty of interviewing himself.
“As a playwright, Mr. Shaw, you are of course a follower of Ibsen?”
“What! I a follower of Ibsen? My good sir, as far as England is concerned, Ibsen is a follower of mine.”
“Shakespeare is your model perhaps?”
“Shakespeare! stuff! Shakespeare—a disillusioned idealist! a pessimist! a rationalist! a capitalist! If the fellow had not been a great poet, his rubbish would have been forgotten long ago. Molière, as a thinker, was worth a thousand Shakespeares. If my play is not better than Shakespeare, let it be damned promptly.”
“Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them”
