Quotes by Playwrights - Page 4

My hate is general, I detest all men;Some because they are wicked and do evil,Others because they tolerate the wicked,Refusing them the active vigorous scornWhich vice should stimulate in virtuous minds.
Molière
..What our contempt often hurls from us,We wish it our again; the present pleasure,By revolution lowering,does becomeThe opposite of itself..
William Shakespeare
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow worldLike a Colossus, and we petty menWalk under his huge legs and peep aboutTo find ourselves dishonorable graves.Men at some time are masters of their fates.The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our starsBut in ourselves, that we are underlings.
William Shakespeare
When you start your journey towards your target, walk and then rest for a while and then walk again and then rest for a while again and then walk again! Rule out the option of failure in your mind! Leave only one option available: To reach your target!
Mehmet Murat ildan
I, myself, spent 9 years in an insane asylum and never had any suicidal tendencies, but I know that every conversation I had with a psychiatrist during the morning visit made me long to hang myself because I was aware that I could not slit his throat.
Antonin Artaud
JASON: 'Intended wings.' How depressing.MICHAEL: Yes. Makes them into suicides, really, the pigeons.JASON: No - no, it doesn't. It could mean the wings were 'intended' to carry them upwards, out of the darkness, but they were defective in some way, these wings, so the pigeons aren't suicidal, not at all, just badly equipped for flying. Like the rest of us.
Simon Gray
Another preoccupation fed into this dynamic relationship between discovery and denial: does sexual abuse actually matter? Should it, in fact, be allowed? After all, it was only in the 19070s that the Paedophile Information Exchange had argued for adults’ right to have sex with children – or rather by a slippery sleight of word, PIE inverted the imperative by arguing that children should have the right to have sex with adults. This group had been disbanded after the imprisonment of Tom O’Carroll, its leader, with some of its activists bunkered in Holland’s paedophile enclaves, only to re-appear over the parapets in the sex crime controversies of the 1990s. How recent it was, then, that paedophilia was fielded as one of the liberation movements, how many of those on the left and right of the political firmament, were – and still are – persuaded that sex with children is merely another case for individual freedom?Few people in Britain at the turn of the century publicly defend adults’ rights to sex with children. But some do, and they are to be found nesting in the coalition crusading against evidence of sexual suffering. They have learned from the 1970s, masked their intentions and diverted attention on to ‘the system’. Others may not have come out for paedophilia but they are apparently content to enter into political alliances with those who have. We believe that this makes their critique of survivors and their allies unreliable. Others genuinely believe in false memories, but may not be aware of the credentials of some of their advisors.
Beatrix Campbell
No art can possibly comfort HER then, even though art is credited with so many things, especially an ability to offer solace. Sometimes, of course, art creates the suffering in the first place.
Elfriede Jelinek
If you can be very impartial in analysing your own past, then you will have a much better future!
Mehmet Murat ildan
In the New Year, never forget to thank to your past years because they enabled you to reach today! Without the stairs of the past, you cannot arrive at the future!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water.
W Somerset Maugham
Henry: I usen't to need anyone, just to myself, stories, there was a great one about an old fellow called Bolton, I never finished it, I never finished any of them, I never finished anything, everything always went on for ever. (Pause.)
Samuel Beckett
When peoples cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.
Langston Hughes
I hate parties.And a wedding is the biggest party of all.All the guests arrived and Orpheus is taking a shower.He's always taking a shower when the guests arrive so he doesn't have to greet them.Then I have to greet them.
Sarah Ruhl
The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination,made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.
Oscar Wilde
Sometimes a strong wind blows suddenly and you leave your beloved tree without saying even goodbye, like a pale autumn leaf! This uncertainty of life makes every moment in life infinitely precious.
Mehmet Murat ildan
His feet went banging down some stairs. He closed his eyes. They went through cinders and dirt, his heels gathering small windrows of trash. A dim world receded above his upturned toes, shapes of skewed shacks erupted bluely in the niggard lamplight. The rusting carcass of an automobile passed slowly on his right. Dim scenes pooling in the summer night, wan ink wash of junks tilting against a paper sky, rorschach boatmen poling mutely over a mooncobbled sea. He lay with his head on the moldy upholstery of an old car seat among packingcrates and broken shoes and suncrazed rubber toys in the dark. Something warm was running on his chest. He put up a hand. I am bleeding. Unto my death.
Cormac McCarthy
Good literature is a lifeboat! Every time you feel you are sinking, jump on it!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Literature is that which denounces and slashes apart the repressing machine at the level of the signified.
Kathy Acker
Since the future is unknown, no path can take you to the known!
Mehmet Murat ildan
When modern values and modern people are under attack in a country, we can be sure of a dark future in that country!
Mehmet Murat ildan
It is the artist who tries to gradually accustom people to the possibilities of a better state of things.
Catherine Amy Dawson Scott
That voice that cries out doesn't have to be a weakling's does it?
John Osborne
Father Brendan Flynn: "A woman was gossiping with her friend about a man whom they hardly knew - I know none of you have ever done this. That night, she had a dream: a great hand appeared over her and pointed down on her. She was immediately seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The next day she went to confession. She got the old parish priest, Father O' Rourke, and she told him the whole thing. 'Is gossiping a sin?' she asked the old man. 'Was that God All Mighty's hand pointing down at me? Should I ask for your absolution? Father, have I done something wrong?' 'Yes,' Father O' Rourke answered her. 'Yes, you ignorant, badly-brought-up female. You have blamed false witness on your neighbor. You played fast and loose with his reputation, and you should be heartily ashamed.' So, the woman said she was sorry, and asked for forgiveness. 'Not so fast,' says O' Rourke. 'I want you to go home, take a pillow upon your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me.' So, the woman went home: took a pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to her roof, and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old parish priest as instructed. 'Did you gut the pillow with a knife?' he says. 'Yes, Father.' 'And what were the results?' 'Feathers,' she said. 'Feathers?' he repeated. 'Feathers; everywhere, Father.' 'Now I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out onto the wind,' 'Well,' she said, 'it can't be done. I don't know where they went. The wind took them all over.' 'And that,' said Father O' Rourke, 'is gossip!
John Patrick Shanley
What infinite heart's-easeMust kings neglect, that private men enjoy!And what have kings, that privates have not too,Save ceremony, save general ceremony?And what art thou, thou idle ceremony?What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st moreOf mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?What are thy rents? what are thy comings in?O ceremony, show me but thy worth!What is thy soul of adoration?Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,Creating awe and fear in other men?Wherein thou art less happy being fear'dThan they in fearing.What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!Think'st thou the fiery fever will go outWith titles blown from adulation?Will it give place to flexure and low bending?Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee,Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,That play'st so subtly with a king's repose;I am a king that find thee, and I know'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,The farced title running 'fore the king,The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pompThat beats upon the high shore of this world,No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,Not all these, laid in bed majestical,Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,Who with a body fill'd and vacant mindGets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread;Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,But, like a lackey, from the rise to setSweats in the eye of Phoebus and all nightSleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,And follows so the ever-running year,With profitable labour, to his grave:And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.The slave, a member of the country's peace,Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wotsWhat watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,Whose hours the peasant best advantages.
William Shakespeare
An uneducated society will eventually turn into something lower than a herd of animals!
Mehmet Murat ildan
A society with lynch culture needs a big zoo, not for the animals definitely, but for the very people themselves!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The journey of every ignorant and obedient society always ends up in the same place: In the desert!
Mehmet Murat ildan
No, what Great Aunt Winifred was suffering from was the persecution every happily single woman suffers: the predictable social condemnation of her independence and childlessness. Dorothy reminded herself of what she'd learned during a university course on feminist history (with a strong Marxist slant): spinsters are a threat to patriarchy.
Tobsha Learner
Does rough weather choose men over women? Does the sun beat on men, leaving women nice and cool?' Nyawira asked rather sharply. 'Women bear the brunt of poverty. What choices does a woman have in life, especially in times of misery? She can marry or live with a man. She can bear children and bring them up, and be abused by her man. Have you read Buchi Emecheta of Nigeria, Joys of Motherhood? Tsitsi Dangarembga of Zimbabwe, say, Nervous Conditions? Miriama Ba of Senegal, So Long A Letter? Three women from different parts of Africa, giving words to similar thoughts about the condition of women in Africa.''I am not much of a reader of fiction,' Kamiti said. 'Especially novels by African women. In India such books are hard to find.''Surely even in India there are women writers? Indian women writers?' Nyawira pressed. 'Arundhati Roy, for instance, The God of Small Things? Meena Alexander, Fault Lines? Susie Tharu. Read Women Writing in India. Or her other book, We Were Making History, about women in the struggle!''I have sampled the epics of Indian literature,' Kamiti said, trying to redeem himself. 'Mahabharata, Ramayana, and mostly Bhagavad Gita. There are a few others, what they call Purana, Rig-Veda, Upanishads … Not that I read everything, but …''I am sure that those epics and Puranas, even the Gita, were all written by men,' Nyawira said. 'The same men who invented the caste system. When will you learn to listen to the voices of women?
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Of all creatures that can feel and think,we women are the worst treated things alive
Euripides
Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.
Herman Wouk
It is the good children, Madame, who make the most terrible revolutionaries. They say nothing, they do not hide under the table, they eat only one sweet at a time, but later on, they make Society pay dearly for it!
Jean-Paul Sartre
Upstairs on a bus! It’s Unbelievable
Diane Samuels
You mustn’t throw them away. Let me have them.
Diane Samuels
For a child, no hand is stronger and softer than the hand which touches her lovingly!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Follow the river to reach the sea; follow the sea to reach the ocean. And finally follow the ocean to reach the wisdom! As long as you target beyond of the beyond, you will reach the very beyond!
Mehmet Murat ildan
It is good to be imperfect so that we retain our joy to work hard to rise to perfection!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Okay baby, let's take this rocket to Uranus. This hoor is perfect, and she can act as well.
Irvine Welsh
THOMASttttttttttttGuiltyOf mankind. I have perpetrated human nature. My father and mother were accessories before the fact, But there’ll be no accessories after the fact, By my virility there won’t! Just see me As I am, like a perambulating Vegetable, patched with inconsequential Hair, looking out of two small jellies for the meansOf life, balanced on folding bones, my sexNo Beauty but a blemish to be hiddenBehind judicious rags, driven and scorched By boomerang rages and lunacies which neverTouch the accommodating artichokeOr the seraphic strawberry beaming in its bed:I defend myself against pain and death by painAnd death, and make the world go round, they tell meBy one of my less lethal appetites:Half this grotesque life I spend in a state Of slow decomposition, using The name of unconsidered God as a pedestal On which I stand and bray that I’m bestOf beasts, until under some patientMoon or other I fall to pieces, Like a cake of dung. Is there a slut would Hold this in her arms and put her lips against it?JENNETSluts are only human. By a quirkOf unastonished nature, your obscene Decaying figure of vegetable funCan drag upon a woman’s heart, as thoughHeaven were dragging up the roots of hell. What is to be done? Something compels us into The terrible fallacy that man is desirable and there’s no escaping into truth. The crimesAnd cruelties leave us longing, and campaigning Love still pitches his tent of light amongThe suns and moons. You may be decay and a platitudeOf flesh, but I have no other such memory of life. You may be corrupt as ancient applies, well thenCorruption is what I most willingly harvest. You are Evil, Hell, the Father of Lies; if soHell is my home and my days of good were a holiday:Hell is my hill and the world slopes away from itInto insignificance. I have come suddenlyUpon my heart and where it is I see no help for.
Christopher Fry
On top of everything else, Boobie's got the clap.
Adam Rapp
Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder. In the end I gave in. That reminds me—I spotted something between her legs that made me think of you.
Tom Stoppard
When the reality looks extraordinarily unreal, you must know that you are in an extraordinarily beautiful place!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The less courage you have, the more dwarf you shall be; the more courage you have, the more giant you shall be!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The distance between you and your destination can be set to zero only by your courage to act and by your determination to sustain this action till the end!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Wherever in the world a country is governed by spiritually ill, politically empty, ethically rotten and mentally stupid people, over there you can find nothing but chaos, tears and fire!
Mehmet Murat ildan
A waterfall cannot be silent, just as the wisdom! When they speak, the voice of power speaks!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Every command leaves behind a painful sting in the person who is forced to carry it out.
Elias Canetti
Your real secret hiding place is not a dark cave, it is not a dusky forest, it is not a desolate house in the middle of nowhere but your real secret hiding place is always your own mind! Every person ultimately hides himself over there, in his own mind!
Mehmet Murat ildan
When you smile, it means that your mind smiles; when you cry, it means that your mind cries!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The strength of your mind determines the depth of your desperation! The weaker the mind, the deeper the desperation!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Spend your time with the people who talk about the stars because to whichever place you put your mind in, you will move to that place! Stars pull you to the stars; mud pulls you to the mud!
Mehmet Murat ildan
My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.
George Bernard Shaw
Alderic, Knight of the Order of the City and the Assault, hereditary Guardian of the King's Peace of Mind, a man not unremembered among the makers of myth, pondered so long upon the Gibbelins' hoard that by now he deemed it his. Alas that I should say of so perilous a venture, undertaken at dead of night by a valorous man, that its motive was sheer avarice! Yet upon avarice only the Gibbelins relied to keep their larders full, and once in every hundred years sent spies into the cities of men to see how avarice did, and always the spies returned again to the tower saying that all was well.It may be thought that, as the years went on and men came by fearful ends on that tower's wall, fewer and fewer would come to the Gibbelins' table: but the Gibbelins found otherwise.("The Hoard Of The Gibbelins")
Lord Dunsany
The last thing he ever said to me was, 'Just always be waiting for me, and then some night you will hear me crowing.
J.M. Barrie
The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.
J.M. Barrie
The heart beneath the breastbone pumping. The blood on its appointed rounds. Life in small places, narrow crannies. In the leaves, the toad's pulse. The delicate cellular warfare in a waterdrop. A dextrocardiac, said the smiling doctor. Your heart's in the right place. Weathershrunk and loveless. The skin drawn and split like an overripe fruit.
Cormac McCarthy
No ornament can make a person look beautiful if the person has a bad heart! A good heart is the finest ornament, the best makeup, the best cloth, the best jewel, the best lipstick and the best earring!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Don’t mention me about your religion! Show me your heart! If you have the heart of an innocent child, you have the best religion, even if you are a nonbeliever!
Mehmet Murat ildan
If you move faster than the music, it will look strange; if you move slower than the music, it will look strange! Be like autumn leaves which follow exactly the rhythm of the wind!
Mehmet Murat ildan