Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Quotes

• We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction. And time is its only measure.

  Tom Stoppard

  One Direction, Intuition, Compass

  "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead". www.imdb.com. 1990.

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• Actors! The mechanics of cheap melodrama! That isn't death! You scream and choke and sink to your knees but it doesn't bring death home to anyone- it doesn't catch them unawares and start the whisper in their skulls that says- 'One day you are going to die.

  Tom Stoppard

  Home, Skulls, One Day

  Tom Stoppard (2007). “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, p.83, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Audiences know what to expect, and that is all that they are prepared to believe in.

  Tom Stoppard

  Believe, Audience, Prepared

  Tom Stoppard (2007). “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, p.84, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat? Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat. Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats. Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.

  Tom Stoppard

  Thinking, Negative, Might

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• It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean one thinks of it like being alive in a box, one keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead, which should make all the difference, shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never know you were in a box would you?... Even taking into account the fact that you're dead, it isn't a pleasant thought. Especially if you're dead, really. Ask yourself, if I asked you straight off-- I'm going to stuff you in this box now would you rather be alive or dead? Naturally you'd prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all.

  Tom Stoppard

  Silly, Mean, Thinking

  "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead". www.imdb.com. 1990.

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• We've traveled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.

  Tom Stoppard

  Time, Moving, Taken

  Tom Stoppard (1991). “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead”, Grove/Atlantic

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• Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

  William Shakespeare

  Halloween, Math, Insanity

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 2, sc. 2, l. [211]

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• Life in a box is better than no life at all... I expect.

  Tom Stoppard

  Boxes

  Tom Stoppard (1991). “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead”, Grove/Atlantic

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• 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

  Dream, Butterfly, Two

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• There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it.

  Tom Stoppard

  Moments, Said, Has Beens

  Tom Stoppard (2007). “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, p.125, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

  Tom Stoppard

  Inspirational, Memories, Eye

  Tom Stoppard (2007). “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, p.61, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one’s memory. And yet, I can’t remember it.

  Tom Stoppard

  Memories, Forever, Childhood

  "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead". www.imdb.com. 1990.

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• Between "just desserts" and "tragic irony" we are given quite a lot of scope for our particular talent. Generally speaking, things have gone about as far as they can possibly go when things have got about as bad as they reasonably get.

  Tom Stoppard

  Gone, Irony, Talent

  "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead". Book by Tom Stoppard, www.goodreads.com. 1966.

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• Each move is dictated by the previous one--that is the meaning of order

  Tom Stoppard

  Moving, Order

  Tom Stoppard (2007). “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, p.60, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• We must be born with an intuition of mortality.

  Tom Stoppard

  Intuition, Mortality, Born

  Tom Stoppard (2007). “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, p.72, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.

  Tom Stoppard

  School, Blood, Giving

  "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead". www.imdb.com. 1990.

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• Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?

  Tom Stoppard

  Optimistic, Surviving, Ifs

  Tom Stoppard (2013). “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”, p.106, Faber & Faber

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• What did you have in mind? A short, blunt human pyramid?

  Tom Stoppard

  Pyramids, Mind, Blunt

  Tom Stoppard (2013). “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”, p.32, Faber & Faber

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• Such thanks as fits a king's remembrance.

  William Shakespeare

  Kings, Remembrance, Thanks

  William Shakespeare, Oliver William Bourn Peabody, Samuel Weller Singer, Charles Symmons, John Payne Collier (1839). “The Dramatic Works of William Shakspeare: King Lear. Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet. Othello”, p.289

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• All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.

  Tom Stoppard

  Eye, Nudge, Existentialism

  'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead' (1967) act 1

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• What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

  William Shakespeare

  Beauty, Moving, Angel

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 2, sc. 2, l. [316]

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• We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.

  Tom Stoppard

  Integrity, Somewhere Else, History

  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 1

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• Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking: Well, at least I'm not dead.

  Tom Stoppard

  Life, Lying, Thinking

  Tom Stoppard (1991). “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead”, Grove/Atlantic

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• Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?

  Tom Stoppard

  Funny, Time, Humor

  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 2

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• Rosencrantz: Shouldn't we be doing something--constructive? Guildenstern: What did you have in mind? ... A short, blunt human pyramid...?

  Tom Stoppard

  Pyramids, Mind, Blunt

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