Contrive Quotes

(from a 1967 interview) "I just knew that if you engaged the audience with a promise that something would develop, you were in business. If not, you had to contrive automatic ridiculousness continuously. Comedy, in this sense, is all about preparation. Things have to be arranged and set up - cause and effect - and if the cause is apparent to the audience, they`ll stick with it until their sagacity is rewarded. It`s their intelligence that foresees things, while the comic character doesn`t."

When we arrived in London, my sadness at leaving Paris was turned into despair. After my long stay in the French capital, huge, ponderous, massive London seemed to me as ugly a thing as man could contrive to make.

This is what extremely grieves us, that a man who never fought Should contrive our fees to pilfer, on who for his native land Never to this day had oar, or lance, or blister in his hand.