Shakespeare Quotations | Page 3

Increasingly, I find myself drawn to classic forms - to Euripides, Shakespeare and grand opera.

I'm quite sure Shakespeare enjoyed writing Iago much more than he did writing Othello. If you write about someone you love, what the hell are you supposed to say about that person? It's much better to have something between you and your main character that grates.

I never publicise in advance what I'm going to be singing because I never quite know until I start. I often change my mind halfway through. I sometimes throw in stuff about politics or Shakespeare or do songs in Yiddish.

If Shakespeare were working right now, he wouldn't be working with a quill pen. He would be working with whatever the cutting edge of theatrical drama would be. And this is where literature is headed.

If Shakespeare thought comedy worthwhile, that means the rest of us can take a break from tragedy now and then without betraying our calling, even if the modern professional intellectual, a poseur by nature, has yet to discover this.

I remember, after graduating high school, I got a part in a play with the Washington Shakespeare Festival - a little part. But I remember thinking this would be a great way of making a living... to be an actor. I never really thought I'd make a lot of money at it.

I read Shakespeare when I was 14 because it's what we were taught.

I realized that after years of studying Shakespeare and Chekhov and regional repertory theater, what I really wanted to do was bust in and rob a bank and jump in the screaming getaway car and tear through the city and get in a shootout.

Christopher Knowles, Buechner, Heiner Mueller, Burroughs, Chekhov, Shakespeare - it's all one body of work.

Before acting, I was always attracted to words, to literature - be they the words of Williams, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare or Moliere.

I don't think I have had a big break, although joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986 opened up new horizons.

By recycling pre-existing material, Shakespeare seemed to endorse a view common in his time, which has become even more entrenched in the 400 years since: that all the truly essential stories are already in the bag.

If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.

I did a lot of musicals when I was young and finally went to drama school to try and get away from doing musicals... and of course the first thing that happened when I got out is I got offered a musical. And then when I got to the Royal Shakespeare Company, which was my next job, I ended up doing a bloody musical!

You know, so many things get redone -- music gets remade, Shakespeare gets remade,

You couldn't escape the literary atmosphere in our home. I grew up as a Britisher. I played a protagonist of every nationality in stage adaptations of Shakespeare and Brecht. I graduated from Yale. When I moved to the U.S., I realized with some amount of surprise that I was seen as an ethnic actor.

And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Then are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Life is a tale told by an idiot -- full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Self-loving is not so vile a sin, my liege, as self-neglecting.

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.

I wish you all the joy you can wish.

It does not follow . . . that the right to criticize Shakespeare involves the power of writing better plays. And in fact . . . I do not profess to write better plays.

The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed- It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.

Who steals my purse steals trash: 'tis something, nothin', 'twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands. But he who filches from me my good name, robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed.

Though I am not naturally honest, I am sometimes by chance.

We must be free or die who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold Which Milton held

This fellow's wise enough to play the fool, And to do that well craves a kind of wit.

All of your scholarship, all your study of Shakespeare and Wordsworth would be vain if at the same time you did not build your character and attain mastery over your thoughts and your actions

How like a winter hath my absence been. From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen, What old December's bareness everywhere!

All the world's a stage, and the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.