John Osborne
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"John James Osborne" was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre.

In a productive life of more than 40 years, Osborne explored many themes and genres, writing for stage, film and TV. His personal life was extravagant and iconoclastic. He was notorious for the ornate violence of his language, not only on behalf of the political causes he supported but also against his own family, including his wives and children.

Osborne was one of the first writers to address Britain's purpose in the post-imperial age. He was the first to question the point of the British monarchy/monarchy on a prominent public stage. During his peak (1956–1966), he helped make contempt an acceptable and now even cliched onstage emotion, argued for the cleansing wisdom of bad behaviour and bad taste, and combined unsparing truthfulness with devastating wit.

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They're basically gutting it out to the stone and starting over.

It is easy to answer the ultimate questions -- it saves you bothering with the immediate ones.

Laughter's the nearest we ever get, or should get, to sainthood. It's the state of grace that saves most of us from contempt.

There's no such thing as failure - just waiting for success.

Don't clap too hard - it's a very old building.

The whole point of a sacrifice is that you give up something you never really wanted in the first place. People are doing it around you all the time. They give up their careers, say -- or their beliefs -- or sex.

Here we are, we're alone in the universe, there's no God, it just seems that it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece of rock. And here we are. We've only got ourselves. Somehow, we've just got to make a go of it. We've only ourselves.

And even in the hatred of the majority, there's a kind of triumph because I know that, although they'd never admit it, they secretly respect me.

Never believe in mirrors or newspapers.