Joe Orton Quotes

59 Sourced Quotes

I'd the upbringing a nun would envy and that's the truth. Until I was fifteen I was more familiar with Africa than my own body.

Joe Orton
The kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste invariably have very bad taste.

Joe Orton
Fay: Your explanation had the ring over your balls. Naturally I disbelieved every word.

Joe Orton
Dennis: She's turned me down. She's broken my heart.
Hal: She doesn't know what she is missing, baby.
Dennis: But she does! That's what's so humiliating.

Joe Orton
Two young people—one mad and one sexually insatiable—both naked—are roaming this house. At all costs we must prevent a collision.

Joe Orton
I was enraged that there were so many rubbishy novels and rubbishy books. It reminded me of the Bible: 'Of the making of books, there is no end', because there isn't. Libraries might as well not exist; they've got endless shelves of rubbish and hardly any space for good books.

Joe Orton
Mrs. Prentice: Are you Geraldine Barclay?
Nick: Yes.
Mrs. Prentice: Where have you been?
Nick: I've been attending to the thousand and one duties that occupy the average secretary during her working hours.
Mrs Prentice: It doesn't take the whole morning to file your nails, surely?
Nick: I had to lie down. I was sick.
Mrs. Prentice: Are you pregnant?
Nick: I can't discuss my employer's business with you.

Joe Orton
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.

Joe Orton
Rance: You may speak freely in front of me. I represent Her Majesty's Government. Your immediate superiors in madness. I'm from the Commissioners.
Prentice: Which branch?
Rance: The mental branch.
Prentice: Do you cover asylums proper? Or just houses of tentative madness?
Rance: My brief is infinite. I'd have sway over a rabbit hutch if the inmates were mentally disturbed.

Joe Orton
Fay: The Ten Commandments. She was a great believer in some of them.

Joe Orton
Rance: A search party must be organized. What have you in the way of dogs?
Prentice: A spaniel and a miniature poodle.
Rance: Let them be unleashed!

Joe Orton
Mrs Prentice: My uterine contractions have been bogus for some time!
Prentice: What a discovery! Married to the mistress of the fraudulent climax.

Joe Orton
In an age of declining faith, sir, surely it's enough for the young to hold spiritual convictions. It's an act of pedantry to ask that they should be the right ones.

Joe Orton
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.

Joe Orton
Mrs Prentice: Are you ashamed of the fact that you write to strange men?
Prentice: There's nothing furtive in my relationship with the editor of The Guardian.

Joe Orton
Truscott: Do you realize what I'm doing here?
McLeavy: No. Your every action has been a mystery to me.
Truscott: That is as it should be. The process by which the police arrive at the solution to a mystery is, in itself, a mystery.

Joe Orton
Truscott: I'm no fool.
Fay: Your secret is safe with me.

Joe Orton
Truscott: And you complain you were beaten?
Dennis: Yes.
Truscott: Did you tell anyone?
Dennis: Yes.
Truscott: Who?
Dennis: The officer in charge.
Truscott: What did he say?
Dennis: Nothing.
Truscott: Why not?
Dennis: He was out of breath with kicking.

Joe Orton
McLeavy: Has no one considered my feelings in all this?
Truscott: What percentage do you want?
McLeavy: I don't want money. I'm an honest man.
Truscott: You'll have to mend your ways then.

Joe Orton
Sir — As a playgoer of forty years standing, may I say that I heartily agree with Peter Pinnell in his condemnation of 'Entertaining Mr Sloane'. I myself was nauseated by this endless parade of mental and physical perversion. And to be told that such a disgusting piece of filth now passes for humour! Today's young playwrights take it upon themselves to flaunt their contempt for ordinary decent people. I hope that the ordinary decent people of this country will shortly strike back! Yours truly, Edna Welthorpe (Mrs)

Joe Orton
Geraldine: We must tell the truth!
Prentice: That's a thoroughly defeatist attitude.

Joe Orton
McLeavy: Where did I go wrong? His upbringing was faultless. Did you lead him astray?
Dennis: I was innocent till I met him.
Hal: You met me when you were three days old.

Joe Orton
Kath: Can he be present at the birth of his child?…
Ed: It's all any reasonable child can expect if the dad is present at the conception.

Joe Orton
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!

Joe Orton
Prentice: I'm not mad. It only looks that way.
Rance: Your actions today would get the Archbishop of Canterbury declared non-compos.
Prentice: I'm not the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Rance: That will come at a later stage of your illness.

Joe Orton
Nick: I've also found someone to take an option on the photographs.
Mrs Prentice: What photographs?
Nick: I had a camera concealed in the room.
Mrs Prentice: When I gave myself to you the contract didn't include cinematic rights.
Nick: I'd like a hundred quid for the negatives. You've got until lunchtime.
Mrs Prentice: I shall complain to the manager.
Nick: It will do you no good. He took the photographs.
Mrs. Prentice: Oh, this is scandalous! I'm a married woman.
Nick: You didn't behave like a married woman last night.

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

Joe Orton
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.

Joe Orton
Reading isn't an occupation we encourage among police officers. We try to keep the paper work down to a minimum.

Joe Orton
People think I write fantasy, but I don't. Some things may be exaggerated or distorted, but they're realistic figures.... There's nothing incredible about it.

Joe Orton