55 Quotes About Play

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

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

Listen, we’ll come visit you. Okay? I’ll dress up as William Shakespeare, Lucent as Emily Dickinson, and beautiful ‘Ray’ as someone dashing and manly like Jules Verne or Ernest Hemingway...and we’ll write on your white-room walls. We’ll write you out of your supposed insanity. I love you, Micky Affias.-James (from "Descendants of the Eminent") Tim Cummings

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool; And to do that well craves a kind of wit: He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time, And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practise As full of labour as a wise man's art For folly that he wisely shows is fit; But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit. William Shakespeare

I leave the kitchen table to bathe, and to dress for church. If only my closet held on its shelves an array of faces I could wear rather than dresses, I would know which face to put on today. As for the dresses, I haven't a clue. Tim Cummings

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

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

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. R O S: And talking to himself. G U I L: And talking to himself. . Tom Stoppard

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

Each person must implement their preferred problem solving method to address existential questions pertaining to life and death, living and loving, working and playing, resting and restructuring. Kilroy J. Oldster

The level of your dedication plays a big role in having stability Sunday Adelaja

Then in the spring something happened to me. Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for time. Eugene ONeill

Don't even try making out I’m making this up. I’ve got proof. Evidence. Diane Samuels

Why won’t you help me?
 You have to able to manage on your own. Diane Samuels

I set up and staged hundreds of ends-of-the-world and watched, enthralled, as they played themselves out. Annie Dillard

...and tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me... Sarah Kane

Tell me something wonderful, " he said to Dane. "Tell me that we are going to die dreamfully and loved in our sleep."" You're always writing one of your plays on the phone, " said Dane."I said, something wonderful. Say something about springtime."" It is sloppy and wet. It is a beast from the sea."" Ah, " said Harry. Lorrie Moore

Emotions tend to entwine Earthlings together. Ruchira Khanna

It is amazing how sharing of one’s intimate details can make human beings forget the formality of a relationship and bring them closer together. Ruchira Khanna

You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as you - or else I pretended to. I am really not quite sure which - I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other. Henrik Ibsen

Oh, come on! Nobody's favorite color is BROWN! Lee Blessing

MASHA. Just think, I am already beginning to forget her face. People will not remember us either. They will forget. V E R S H I N I N. Yes. They will forget. That is our fate, you can't do anything about it. The things which to us seem serious, significant, very important, - the time will come - they will be forgotten or they will seem of no consequence. Anton Chekhov

Books have power to bring you glory or doom, it all depends on perception. Nikita Dudani

Thus like a Captive in an Isle confin'd, Man walks at large, a Pris'ner of the Mind John Dryden

Small boys often produce their own plays; but usually the parts are not written out. They hardly need to be, for the main line of each character is always "Stick 'em up! " In these plays the curtain is always rung down on a set of corpses, for small boys are by nature through and uncompromising. A.S. Neill

You aren’t allowed back until you’ve learned to willingly suspend disbelief. Rebecca Murphy

Orpheus never liked words. He had his music. He would get a funny look on his face and I would say what are you thinking about and he would always be thinking about music. If we were in a restaurant sometimes Orpheus would look sullen and wouldn't talk to me and I thought people felt sorry for me. I should have realized that women envied me. Their husbands talked too much. But I wanted to talk to him about my notions. I was working on a new philosophical system. It involved hats. 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. Orpheus said the mind is a slide ruler. It can fit around anything. Show me your body, he said. It only means one thing. Sarah Ruhl

[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error. Surreptitiously and beguilingly, then, with humour or gravity, works of art--novels, poems, plays, paintings or films--can function as vehicles to explain our condition to us. They may act as guides to a truer, more judicious, more intelligent understanding of the world. Alain De Botton

A book is a place where my reality, escapism, hope, despair, love and death lie. Nikita Dudani

My only wish is to be buried with my books. Nikita Dudani

In the first play, the crisis is Thomas More. In the second it’s Anne Boleyn. In the third book, and the third play, it’s crisis every day, an overlapping series of only just negotiable horrors. It’s climbing and climbing. Then a sudden abrupt fall - within days. Hilary Mantel

School plays were invented partly to give parents and easy opportunity to demonstrate their priorities. Calvin Trillin

So always avoid banality. That is, avoid illustrating the author's words and remarks. If you want to create a true masterpiece you must always avoid beautiful lies: the truths on the calender under each date you find a proverb or saying such as: "He who is good to others will be happy." But this is not true. It is a lie. The spectator, perhaps, is content. The spectator likes easy truths. But we are not there to please or pander to the spectator. We are here to tell the truth. Jerzy Grotowski

DANWhat do you want? A L I C E To be loved. D A N That simple? A L I C E It's a big want. Patrick Marber

Plot twist: everything goes exactly as planned. Criss Jami

To create, I destroyed myself; I made myself external to such a degree within myself that within myself I do not exist except in an external fashion. I am the living setting in which several actors make entrances, putting on several different plays. Fernando Pessoa

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

The plays should have the half-life of plutonium. SuzanLori Parks

O, thou art fairer than the evening air     Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;     Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter     When he appear'd to hapless Semele;     More lovely than the monarch of the sky     In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms Excerpt From: Christopher Marlowe. “The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus Christopher Marlowe

I knew exactly when the fever had struck. I had been reading Hamlet in an English class at school. Everyone else stumbled, puzzling over the strange words. Then it had been my turn, and the language had suddenly woken in me, so that my heart and lungs and tongue and throat were on fire. Later, I understood that this was why people spoke of Shakespeare as a god. At the time, I felt like weeping. Somebody had released me from dumbness, from utter isolation. I knew that I could live inside these words, that they would give me a a shape, a shell. I had no idea, then, that I would never play Hamlet…. I’m an actor, and in a good year I earn eleven thousand pounds for dressing up as a carrot. . Amanda Craig

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

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

I fear that there will be no neat ending to this, in the manner of the old Greek plays. Where the Gods descend, and all is explained, and tidied away. Paul McAuley

DYER. (Sits down) There was nothing that I recall save that the Sunne was a Round flat shining Disc and the Thunder was a Noise from a Drum or a Pan.VANNBRUGGHE. (Aside) What a Child is this! (To Dyer) These are only our Devices, and are like the Paint of our Painted Age.DYER. But in Meditation the Sunne is a vast and glorious Body, and Thunder is the most forcible and terrible Phaenomenon: it is not to be mocked, for the highest Passion is Terrour. . Peter Ackroyd

Hamlet' dwarfs 'Hamilton' - it dwarfs pretty much everything - but there's a revealing similarity between them. Shakespeare's longest play leaves its audience in the dark about some basic and seemingly crucial facts. It's not as if the Bard forgot, in the course of all those words, to tell us whether Hamlet was crazy or only pretending: He wanted us to wonder. He forces us to work on a puzzle that has no definite answer. And this mysteriousness is one reason why we find the play irresistible. 'Hamilton' is riddled with question marks. The first act begins with a question, and so does the second. The entire relationship between Hamilton and Burr is based on a mutual and explicit lack of comprehension: 'I will never understand you, ' says Hamilton, and Burr wonders, 'What it is like in his shoes?' Again and again, Lin distinguishes characters by what they wish they knew. 'What'd I miss?' asks Jefferson in the song that introduces him. 'Would that be enough?' asks Eliza in the song that defines her. 'Why do you write like you're running out of time?' asks everybody in a song that marvels at Hamilton's drive, and all but declares that there's no way to explain it. 'Hamilton', like 'Hamlet', gives an audience the chance to watch a bunch of conspicuously intelligent and well-spoken characters fill the stage with 'words, words, words, ' only to discover, again and again, the limits to what they can comprehend. Unknown

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

It’s the remarkable thing about academics: they look at Shakespeare and always see their own faces in him. Amanda Craig

And I was a Child again, watching the bright World. But the Spell broke when at this Juncture some Gallants jumped from the Pitt onto the Stage and behaved as so many Merry-Andrews among the Actors, which reduced all to Confusion. I laugh'd with them also, for I like to make Merry among the Fallen and there is pleasure to be had in the Observation of the Deformity of Things. Thus when the Play resumed after the Disturbance, it was only to excite my Ridicule with its painted Fictions, wicked Hypocrisies and villainous Customs, all depicted with a little pert Jingle of Words and a rambling kind of Mirth to make the Insipidnesse and Sterility pass. There was no pleasure in seeing it, and nothing to burden the Memory after: like a voluntarie before a Lesson it was absolutely forgotten, nothing to be remembered or repeated. Peter Ackroyd