John Osborne

Demander à un écrivain ce qu'il pense des critiques, c'est demander à un réverbère ce qu'il pense des chiens.

JIMMY: Do the Sunday papers make you feel ignorant?
CLIFF: Not ‘arf.
JIMMY: Well, you are ignorant. You’re just a peasant. (To Alison.) What about you? You’re not a peasant are you?
ALISON: (absently). What’s that?
JIMMY: I said do the papers make you feel you’re not so brilliant after all?
ALISON: Oh—I haven’t read them yet.
JIMMY: I didn’t ask you that. I said—
CLIFF: Leave the poor girlie alone. She’s busy.
JIMMY: Well, she can talk, can’t she? You can talk, can’t you? You can express an opinion. Or does the White Woman’s Burden make it impossible to think?
ALISON: I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening properly.
JIMMY: You bet you weren’t listening. Old Porter talks, and everyone turns over and goes to sleep. And Mrs. Porter gets ‘em all going with the first yawn.
CLIFF: Leave her alone, I said.
JIMMY: (shouting). All right, dear. Go back to sleep. It was only me talking. You know? Talking? Remember? I’m sorry.
CLIFF: Stop yelling. I’m trying to read.
JIMMY: Why do you bother? You can’t understand a word of it.
CLIFF: Uh huh.
JIMMY: You’re too ignorant.
CLIFF: Yes, and uneducated. Now shut up, will you?

JIMMY: Perhaps there’s a concert on. (...) Oh, yes. There’s a Vaughan Williams. Well, that’s something, anyway. Something strong, something simple, something English. I suppose people like me aren’t supposed to be very patriotic. Somebody said—what was it— we get our cooking from Paris (that’s a laugh), our politics from Moscow, and our morals from Port Said. Something like that, anyway. Who was it? (Pause.) Well, you wouldn’t know anyway.

CLIFF: Give me a cigarette, will you?
JIMMY (to Allison) : Don’t give him one.
CLIFF: I can’t stand the stink of that old pipe any longer. I must have a cigarette.
JIMMY: I thought the doctor said no cigarettes?
CLIFF: Oh, why doesn’t he shut up?
JIMMY: All right. They’re your ulcers. Go ahead, and have a bellyache, if that’s what you want. I give up. I give up. I’m sick of doing things for people. And all for what?

JIMMY: If you’ve no world of your own, it’s rather pleasant to regret the passing of someone else’s. I must be getting sentimental. But I must say it’s pretty dreary living in the American Age—unless you’re an American of course. Perhaps all our children will be Americans. That’s a thought isn’t it?

The injustice of it is about perfect—the wrong people going hungry, the wrong people being loved, the wrong people dying… while the rest of the world is being blown to bits around us what matters — me, me me.

JIMMY: Why do I do this every Sunday? Even the book reviews seem to be the same as lastweek’s. Different books—same reviews. Have you finished that one yet?

It's my own decision entirely. In fact, she's just been trying to talk me out of it. It's just that suddenly, tonight, I see what I have really known all along. That you can't be happy when what you're doing is wrong, or hurting someone else. I suppose it could never have worked, anyway, but I do love you, Jimmy. I shall never love anyone as I have loved you. But I can't go on. I can't take part - in all that suffering. I can't!

JIMMY: Nobody thinks, nobody cares. No beliefs, no convictions and no enthusiasm. Just another Sunday evening.

They all want to escape from the pain of being alive. And, most of all, from love.