Theatre is "giving people the impression that they (the audience) have arrived at just the right moment, in just the right seat, to see the right sequence of events."

"If you live with your mother after a succession of men have left her, you tend to be slightly biased. Men are pretty unreliable."

"I am not the best director of my plays, but I'm the best one I know. It cuts out the middle man."

Gerhard Stadelmaier, the German theatre critic called Ayckbourn "The Molière of the middle classes."

In 1997 there was the celebrated "luvvies versus lavvies" dispute when the redoubtable philistinism of the British reared up in the form of a local councillor who said that the theatre's grant would mean that the towns 22 public lavatories would have to be closed down. The headline writers could hardly believe their luck. The local paper was full of inarticulate praise for the public conveniences as a major Scarborough attraction, and Ayckbourn lost his rag. "If you happen to be teetotal in this town, then God help you - because there is little else to do apart from get drunk and buy shoes," he wrote. The council later relented.

(The comment about buying shoes refers to the fact that Scarborough, for some unknown, though much commented-upon reason, has considerably more shoe shops than it would appear to need.)

Ayckbourn on The Questors: "it really is a theatre after my own heart."