Plays Quotes

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Seagull

“Poetry, plays, novels, music, they are the cry of the human spirit trying to understand itself and make sense of our world.”
― Laura Malone Elliott, Annie, Between the States

“Theatres are curious places, magician's trick-boxes where the golden memories of dramtic triumphs linger like nostalgic ghosts, and where the unexplainable, the fantastic, the tragic, the comic and the absurd are routine occurences on and off the stage. Murders, mayhem, politcal intrigue, lucrative business, secret assignations, and of course, dinner.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“I was too young that time to value her,
But now I know her. If she be a traitor,
Why, so am I. We still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together,
And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful.”
― Sarah Ruhl, Eurydice

“Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me
And tune his merry note,
Unto the sweet bird's throat;
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Maggie, we're through with lies and liars in this house. Lock the door.”
― Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

“Directing teenage actors is like juggling jars of nitro-glycerine: exhilarating and dangerous.”
― Stephen King, 11/22/63

“If one good deed in all my life I did,
I do repent it from my very soul.”
― William Shakespeare

“A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“GUIL: It [Hamlet's madness] really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mistaken identities, arguing his father is his mother, that sort of thing; intimations of suicide, forgoing of exercise, loss of mirth, hints of claustrophobia not to say delusions of imprisonment; invocations of camels, chameleons, capons, whales, weasels, hawks, handsaws -- riddles, quibbles and evasions; amnesia, paranoia, myopia; day-dreaming, hallucinations; stabbing his elders, abusing his parents, insulting his lover, and appearing hatless in public -- knock-kneed, droop-stockinged and sighing like a love-sick schoolboy, which at his age is coming on a bit strong.

ROS: And talking to himself.

GUIL: And talking to himself.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“We can see the film stars of yesterday in yesterday’s films, hear the voices of poest and singers on a record, keep the plays of dead dramatists upon our bookshelves, but the actor who holds his audience captive for one brief moment upon a lighted stage vanishes forever when the curtain falls. ”
― Daphne du Maurier, The "Rebecca" Notebook: And Other Memories

“Divers alarums and excursions', she read, uncertainly. 'That means lots of terrible happenings, said Magrat. 'You always put that in plays.'
Alarums and what?', said Nanny Ogg, who hadn't been listening.
Excursions', said Magrat patienly.
Oh.' Nanny Ogg brightened a bit. 'The seaside would be nice,' she said.
Oh do shut up, Gytha,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'They're not for you. They're only for divers, like it says. Probably so they can recover from all them alarums.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“My nails are broken, my fingers are bleeding, my arms are covered with the welts left by the paws of your guards—but I am a queen!”
― Sophocles, Antigone

“It’s easier for me to make sense of it that way than it is for me to face the other way—reality. And yet, those evil spirits that were unleashed—be they fake entities from a stupid carnival ride, or cruel malevolencies from dark spiritual chasms of our universe—have stayed with me all these years”
― Tim Cummings, Orphans

“I, on the other hand, interrupt people because my thoughts fly out of my mouth. My handbag's full of rubbish. And I want to do something that matters with my life. Right now I'd like to write plays, sing in musicals, and/or rid the world of poverty, violence, cruelty, and right-wing conservative politics.”
― Alison Larkin, The English American

“In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond...”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“Here is all the invisible world, caught, defined, and calculated. In these books the Devil stands stripped of all his brute disguises. Here are all your familiar spirits-your incubi and succubi; your witches that go by land, by air, and by sea; your wizards of the night and of the day. Have no fear now-we shall find him out and I mean to crush him utterly if he has shown his face!”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“The plays should have the half-life of plutonium.”
― Suzan-Lori Parks

“I set up and staged hundreds of ends-of-the-world and watched, enthralled, as they played themselves out.”
― Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

“Never to be squandered.....the miracle of another human being.”
― Craig Lucas, Prelude to a Kiss

“Here comes Monseiur Le Beau.
Rosalind: With his mouth full of news.
Celia: Which he will put on us, as pigeons feed their young.
Rosalind: Then shall we be news-crammed.
Celia: All the better; we shall be the more marketable.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“It is not enough to discover the secret of a play, its thought and feelings—the actor must be able to convert them into living terms.”
― Konstantin Stanislavski, Creating A Role

“Lesly: I don't think you're insane.

 Jackie-O: You don't?

 Lesly: No.

 Jackie-O: You don't think I'm an eensie weensie bit insane?

 Lesly: I don't think you're insane. I think you're just spoiled.

 Jackie-O: Oh please, if everyone around here is going to start telling the truth, I'm going to bed. ”
― Wendy Macleod, The House of Yes

“It is often said that what sets Shakespeare apart is his ability to illuminate the workings of the soul and so on, and he does that superbly, goodness knows, but what really characterizes his work - every bit of it, in poems and plays and even dedications, throughout every portion of his career - is a positive and palpable appreciation of the transfixing power of language. A Midsummer Night's Dream remains an enchanting work after four hundred years, but few could argue that it cuts to the very heart of human behaviour. What it does is take, and give, a positive satisfaction in the joyous possibilities of verbal expression.”
― Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage

“I got brown sandwiches and green sandwiches. It's either very new cheese or very old meat. - Oscar Madison, from The Odd Couple”
― Neil Simon, The Odd Couple