At 83 Shaw's mind was perhaps not quite as good as it used to be, but it was still better than anyone else's.
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Referring to George Bernard Shaw in While Rome Burns (1934)Alexander Woollcott
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That proves it's not by Shaw, because all Shaw's characters are himself: mere puppets stuck up to spout Shaw.
George Bernard Shaw
Shaw knows at any moment, on any subject, what he thinks, what you will think, what others have thought, what all this thinking entails; and he takes the most elaborate pains to bring these thoughts to light in a form which is by turns abstract and familiar, conciliatory and aggressive, obvious and inferential, comic and puzzling. In a word, Shaw is perhaps the most consciously conscious mind that has ever thought — certainly the most conscious since Rousseau; which may be why both of them often create the same impression of insincerity amounting to charlatanism.
Yet it is by excess of honesty that Shaw himself lent color to his representation as an inconsequential buffoon bent on monopolizing the spotlight.Jacques Barzun
Shaw knows at any moment, on any subject, what he thinks, what you will think, what others have thought, what all this thinking entails; and he takes the most elaborate pains to bring these thoughts to light in a form which is by turns abstract and familiar, conciliatory and aggressive, obvious and inferential, comic and puzzling. In a word, Shaw is perhaps the most consciously conscious mind that has ever thought — certainly the most conscious since Rousseau; which may be why both of them often create the same impression of insincerity amounting to charlatanism. Yet it is by excess of honesty that Shaw himself lent color to his representation as an inconsequential buffoon bent on monopolizing the spotlight.
George Bernard Shaw
Now, if Mr. Shaw and Mr. Saroyan are poles apart, no comparison between the two, one great and the other nothing, one a genius and the other a charlatan, let me repeat that if you must know which writer has influenced my writing when influences are real and for all I know enduring, then that writer has been George Bernard Shaw. I shall in my own day influence a young writer or two somewhere or other, and no one need worry about that.
Young Shaw, hello out there.William Saroyan
Shaw: Madam, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?
Actress: My goodness, Well, I'd certainly think about it
Shaw: Would you sleep with me for a pound?
Actress: Certainly not! What kind of woman do you think I am?!
Shaw: Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.George Bernard Shaw
Woollcott, Alexander
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