Quotes by Playwrights - Page 162

The art of writing involves making as many cups of tea as you can in the time available for writing. Then adding extra time for writing...
Alan Dapre
Lady Bracknell, I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you kindly inform me who I am?
Oscar Wilde
No one has the ability to laugh at their misfortunes like the women of the East End.
Philip Ridley
Sometimes when a father has an ugly, loutish son, the love he bears him so blindfolds his eyes that he does not see his defects, or, rather, takes them for gifts and charms of mind and body, and talks of them to his friends as wit and grace. I, however—for though I pass for the father, I am but the stepfather to "Don Quixote"—have no desire to go with the current of custom, or to implore thee, dearest reader, almost with tears in my eyes, as others do, to pardon or excuse the defects thou wilt perceive in this child of mine. Thou art neither its kinsman nor its friend, thy soul is thine own and thy will as free as any man's, whate'er he be, thou art in thine own house and master of it as much as the king of his taxes and thou knowest the common saying, "Under my cloak I kill the king;" all which exempts and frees thee from every consideration and obligation, and thou canst say what thou wilt of the story without fear of being abused for any ill or rewarded for any good thou mayest say of it.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
There's meaning in thy snores.
William Shakespeare
Then he started his period.One week in bed.Two doctors in.Three painkillers four times a day.And later a letter to the powers-that-bedemanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year.
Carol Ann Duffy
Indeed, it may most verily be saidThat only death and taxes certain are.
Ian Doescher
After my parents were dead, I found in a box and in two chests of drawers nothing but hundreds of bright red Alpine caps, I said, nothing but bright red Alpine stockings. Every one of them knitted by my mother. My parents could have gone into the High Alps with these bright red caps and bright red stockings for thousands of years. I burnt every one of those bright red caps and bright red stockings, I said. I put on one of my mother's hundreds of bright red Alpine caps and in this costume burnt all the others, laughing, laughing, continuously laughing, I said.(Goethe Dies, p.65)
Thomas Bernhard
Yes, Doc, I'm not feeling too well.'Which was true enough, Kwang Meng considered.He had honestly not been feeling too well since he contracted poverty, loneliness, boredom, sexual frustration and periodic coughs and colds. Not to speak of his dreary job.
Goh Poh Seng
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast
Oscar Wilde
Beware the ideas of March... just one little letter changes the whole meaning. I love the way worms can do that.
Alan Dapre
Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us?
Irvine Welsh
In the yard of the inn, Daffy Cadwaladyr introduced himself. "Short for Davyd," he said pleasantly.The Londoner looked as if she'd never heard a sillier name in her life.
Emma Donoghue
Colonel Cathcart is our commanding officer and we must obey him. Why don't you fly four more missions and see what happens?""I don't want to.""Suppose we let you pick your missions and fly milk runs?" Major Major said. "That way you can fly the four missions and not run any risks.""I don't want to fly milk runs. I don't want to be in the war anymore.""Would you like to see our country lose?" Major Major asked."We won't lose. We've got more men, more money, and more material. There are ten million men in uniform who could replace me. Some people are getting killed and a lot more are making money and having fun. Let somebody else get killed.""But suppose everybody on our side felt that way?""Then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way. Wouldn't I?
Joseph Heller
Humanity, let us say, is like people packed in an automobile which is traveling downhill without lights at terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old child. The signposts along the way are all marked 'Progress.
Lord Dunsany
WHAT? YOU AGAIN?' he shouted in capital letters.
Noel Langley
When a Lady chooses to Change Her Mind,' said the Mouse with a touch of hauteur, 'a Gentleman would consider it no more than her Privilege, and not Badger Her About It.
Noel Langley
I swear to hold my tongue about it till the end of your worship's days, and God grant I may be able to let it out tomorrow
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!
Oscar Wilde
- Where is Polonius?- In heaven; send hither to see: if your messenger find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself.
William Shakespeare
But neither could compare with the gargantuan natural edifice that was the mountain upon which Nachtstürm Castle rose. It was a mountain made of the darkness between two lightning bolts. It was made less of earth than Stygian frost. Whole towns fell away as they ascended, as though the ranks of black and frowning conifers waged war against the humans below. Even the path – rather narrow and rarely straight – seemed less made by centuries of pilgrim feet and more by the trace of some careless demon’s claw.It was, in fact, perfect.
Emily C.A. Snyder
Lussurioso: "Welcome, be not far off, we must be better acquainted. Push, be bold with us, thy hand!"Vindice: "With all my heart, i'faith. How dost, sweet musk-cat? When shall we lie together?"Lussurioso: (aside) "Wondrous knave!Gather him into boldness? 'Sfoot, the slave'sAlready as familiar as an ague,And shakes me at his pleasure! -- Friend, I canForget myself in private, but elsewhere,I pray do you remember be."Vindice: "Oh, very well, sir.I conster myself saucy."Lussurioso: "What hast been? What profession?"Vindice: "A bone-setter."Lussurioso: "A bone-setter!"Vindice: "A bawd, my lord, one that sets bones together."Lussurioso: (aside) "Notable bluntness!
Thomas Middleton
But Yossarian knew he was right, because, as he explained to Clevinger, to the best of his knowledge he had never been wrong.
Joseph Heller
Of the 2,639,857 faggots in the New York city area, 2,639,857 think primarily with their cocks.You didn't know that the cock was a thinking organ?Well, by this time, you should know that it is.
Larry Kramer
Holy shit," somebody muttered in the dark."A virgin," sputtered another."I didn't know they still made them.""He just did.
Larry Kramer
Don Pedro - (...)'In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke.'Benedick - The savage bull may, but if ever the sensible Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull's horns and set them in my forehead, and let me be vildly painted; and in such great letters as they writes, 'Here is good horse for hire', let them signify under my sign, 'Here you may see Benedick the married man.
William Shakespeare
Chater: You dare to call me that. I demand satisfaction!Septimus: Mrs Chater demanded satisfaction and now you are demanding satisfaction. I cannot spend my time day and night satisfying the demands of the Chater family.
Tom Stoppard
The craft's occupants clutched their armrests, and more than one of them closed their eyes. But not Artemis. He couldn't. There was something morbidly fascinating about flying into an uncharted tunnel at a reckless speed with only a kleptomaniac dwarf's word for what lay at the other end.
Eoin Colfer
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
We are getting older fatter and balder. Each day brings us one step closer to death. Other than that, life's a ding-a-derry.
M. Kushner
God in his infinite wisdomDid not make me very wise-So when my actions are stupidThey hardly take God by surprise.
Langston Hughes
Whew,' he said, 'I'm glad that's over, Thomas. I've been feeling awfully bad about it.' It was only too evident that he no longer did.
Graham Greene
Such a narrative as this demands some sort of physical consolation for its spiritual tribulation. Our heroine received it in one last cup of tea. The reader may be advised to do so likewise.
Emily C.A. Snyder
Another strike of lightening – now accompanied by the deep-bellied rumble, and the horse reared, incidentally setting Henry very picturesquely against the inconstant moon. Alas, Catherine was deeply engaged in her argument with Old Edric and this missed entirely the melodramatic display. But we may assume that, possessing so strong an imagination, Catherine had often pictured Henry thus...
Emily C.A. Snyder
Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods – they worship us and keep bothering us to do something.
Oscar Wilde
Phileas Fogg, having shut the door of his house at half-past eleven, and having put his right foot before his left five hundred and seventy-five times, and his left foot before his right five hundred and seventy-six times, reached the Reform Club
Jules Verne
The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish.
Joseph Heller
My God - it's a green child!" said the American. "What is this place - the House of Usher?
Dodie Smith
Don't lose today by worrying about tomorrow!!!
John F. Herbert
I don't see what my arse has to do with enchantings!
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.
Sacha Guitry
He's never known anything like it! But then, he has never known anything to write home about, so this is nothing to write home about.
Tom Stoppard
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Oscar Wilde
I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Oscar Wilde
Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman
Oscar Wilde
What could she have done? She was a heroine, and with that came certain obligations.
Emily C.A. Snyder
Who or what inspires you?""I must admit that I often read my own articles in scientific journals and inspire myself.
Eoin Colfer
I'm too old to know everything
Oscar Wilde
A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.
George Bernard Shaw
Doobie always wanted to see the badge. It was shiny, and he was eight.
Eoin Colfer
He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.
Oscar Wilde
Well I won't argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things.That is exactly what things were originally made for.
Oscar Wilde
I, being born a woman and distressedBy all the needs and notions of my kind,Am urged by your propinquity to findYour person fair, and feel a certain zestTo bear your body's weight upon my breast;So subtly is the fume of life designed,To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,And leave me once again undone, possessed.Think not for this, however, the poor treasonOf my stout blood against my staggering brain,I shall remember you with love, or seasonMy scorn with pity, - let me make it plain:I find this frenzy insufficient reasonFor conversation when we meet again.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
More of your conversation would infect my brain.
William Shakespeare
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
People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.
Oscar Wilde
I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses.
Oscar Wilde
I am who I am and that's who I am
Nikolai Gogol
Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.
Gertrude Stein
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Oscar Wilde