Joe Orton Short Quotes

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

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

Joe Orton
Geraldine: At least give me back my clothes. I feel naked without them.

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

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

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

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

Joe Orton
You were born with your legs apart. They'll send you to the grave in a Y-shaped coffin.

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

Joe Orton
Prentice: It's ridiculous. I'm a married man.
Match: Marriage excuses no one the freaks' roll-call.

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

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

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
Mrs Prentice: You put me in an impossible position.
Nick: No position is impossible when you're young and healthy.

Joe Orton
Mike: There's no word in the Irish language for what you were doing.
Wilson: In Lapland they have no word for snow.

Joe Orton
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.

Joe Orton
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
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
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
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."

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
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
Usual messages from the heads of the establishment. The Queen from Windsor, the Pope from Rome: Pilate and Caiaphas celebrating the birth of Christ.

Joe Orton
Rance: How shocking! His abnormal condition has driven him to seek refuge in religion. Always the last ditch stand of a man on the brink of disaster.

Joe Orton
Geraldine: I'm quite a fuckwit!
Rance: Pull yourself together. Why have you been certified if you're sane? Even for a madwoman you're unusually dense.

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
If I ever hear you accuse the police of using violence on a prisoner in custody again, I'll take you down to the station and beat the eyes out of your head.

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
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