Literary Birthday – 13 September – J.B. Priestley

J.B. Priestley was born om 13 September 1894 and died on 14 August 1984.

J.B. Priestley Quotes

1. The way to write a book is the application of the seat of one’s pants to the seat of one’s chair.
2. I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.
3. Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.
4. We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Good night.
5. The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.
6. Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.
7. Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people.
8. If you are a genius, you’ll make your own rules, but if not – and the odds are against it – go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper – write.
9. Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.
10. Most writers enjoy two periods of happiness—when a glorious idea comes to mind, and when a last page has been written and you haven’t had time to know how much better it ought to be.

J.B. Priestley was an English novelist, playwright, and broadcaster. His works include Benighted, An Inspector Calls and Other Plays, and The Shapes of Sleep. Priestley became a household name through his writing and his broadcasts for the BBC during the Second World War. His radio talks attracted audiences of up to 15 million listeners, and Graham Greene described him as a leader second only to Winston Churchill. Priestley was also a wide-ranging literary critic. In 1960, he published Literature and Western Man, a 500-page survey of Western literature from the second half of the 15th century to the mid-20th century. He continued to write and publish into the 1970s. Priestley received several honours late in life, including the Freedom of the City of Bradford and an honorary degree from Bradford University. He declined a knighthood and a peerage but accepted the Order of Merit in 1977.

Source for photograph: National Media Museum from UK, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:J_B_Priestley_at_work_in_his_study,_1940._(7893553148).jpg

by Amanda Patterson
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