Shakespeare's Plays Quotes

• Books have survived television, radio, talking pictures, circulars (early magazines), dailies (early newspapers), Punch and Judy shows, and Shakespeare's plays. They have survived World War II, the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, and the fall of the Roman Empire. They even survived the Dark Ages, when almost no one could read and each book had to be copied by hand. They aren't going to be killed off by the Internet.

  Vicki Myron

  War, Book, Fall

  19 Copy quote

• I grew up in a theater family. My father was a regional theater classical repertory producer. He created Shakespeare festivals. He produced all of Shakespeare's plays, mostly in Shakespeare festivals in Ohio. One of them, the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, is still going. So I grew up not wanting to be an actor, not wanting to go into the family business.

  John Lithgow

  Father, Lakes, Ohio

  Source: www.avclub.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every time we moved on, I joined a different class in a different school with different girls until, aged 13, my father had taken the decision to pull me out of school altogether. Everything I needed, he reasoned, could be found within the rich language of Shakespeare's plays at which, by then, I was something of an old hand.

  Felicity Kendal

  Girl, Father, Taken

  4 Copy quote

• In Shakespeare's plays, the mourner hastening to bury his friend is all the time colliding with the reveller hastening to his wine.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wine, Play, Shakespeare's Plays

  4 Copy quote

• To put it one way, a collection of Shakespeare's plays is richer than a phone book that uses the same number of letters; to put it another, the essence of information lies in the relationships among bits, not their sheer number.

  Hans Christian von Baeyer

  Lying, Book, Play

  "Information: The New Language of Science". Book by Hans Christian von Baeyer, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most charming of theories holds that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays -- that he was of too low a state, and of insufficient education. But where in the wide history of the world do we find art created by the excessively wealthy, powerful, or educated?

  David Mamet

  Art, Powerful, Play

  David Mamet (2011). “True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor”, p.35, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Attachment, Play

  "A Room of One's Own". Essay by Virginia Woolf (Chapter 3, pp. 43-44), October 24, 1929.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let's say there was a burning building and you could rush in and you could save only one thing: either the last known copy of Shakespeare's plays or some anonymous human being. What would you do?

  Woody Allen

  Play, Burning, Literature

  "Bullets Over Broadway". www.imdb.com. 1994.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Make a mistake in the interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s plays, falsely scan a piece of Spenserian verse, and there is unlikely to be an entailment of eternal consequence; but we cannot lightly accept a similar laxity in the interpretation of Scripture. We are dealing with God’s thoughts: we are obligated to take the greatest pains to understand them truly and to explain them clearly.

  D. A. Carson

  Pain, Mistake, Play

  D. A. Carson (1996). “Exegetical Fallacies”, p.9, Baker Books

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Looking for God-or Heaven-by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters.

  C. S. Lewis

  Faith, Reading, Character

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.73, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Shakespeare is the outstanding example of how that can be done. In all of Shakespeare's plays, no matter what tragic events occur, no matter what rises and falls, we return to stability in
  the end.

  Charlton Heston

  Fall, Play, Events

  15 Copy quote

• Learning (Shakespeare's plays) ...in school was a bit of a bore.

  Al Pacino

  Education, Learning, School

  4 Copy quote

• A brilliant treatment of the history of Purgatory in England and its survivals and echoes throughout Shakespeare's plays, above all Hamlet.

  Carol Zaleski

  Echoes, Play, Survival

  4 Copy quote

• Shakespeare's plays often turn on the idea of fate, as much drama does. What makes them so tragic is the gap between what his characters might like to accomplish and what fate provides them.

  Nate Silver

  Drama, Character, Fate

  Nate Silver (2012). “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't”, p.14, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

  Oscar Wilde

  Play, Wife, Secret

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.64, GENERAL PRESS

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Shakespeare's plays are more violent than 'Scarface.'

  Al Pacino

  Inspirational, Play, Violent

  11 Copy quote

• I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.

  Rita Dove

  Reading, Thinking, Play

  4 Copy quote