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Timely Quotes
I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers,
and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own
— John Bartlett
and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own
— John Bartlett
Other Quote Archives:
QuotesFrom Past & Present Plays
Quotes By and About the Theater World's Famous and Infamous
Shakespeare's Little Instruction Book
Quotes from Plays
Love can be had any day! Success is much harder.— Mrs St Maugham in the Donmar Warehouse revival of The Chalk Garden
You're like a pioneer woman without a frontier— Herbie when he meets the indominable Rose in Gypsy
you got somebody in you right from the start, and if you're lucky you figure out who it is and you become it. People who don't become are. . .well, look around you.— Louise Nevelson— in Occupant
My work is a matter of fundamental sounds (no joke intended) made as fully as possible, and I accept responsibility for nothing else. If people want to have headaches among the overtones, let them. And provide their own aspirin.
---Samuel Beckett, quoted in review of Endgame at BAM
Life is essentially a very large brillo pad.— T. Ryder Smith in Dead Man's Cell Phone
Alcoholics are mostly disappointed men.—Doc Delaney in Come Back, Little Sheba
Contradictions are what people are, bundles of contradictions, fighting them and working them out. And I refuse to be dictated to by your overly simplistic logic-chopping approach to life—Tom in Grace
It's {television| gonna change everything, it's gonna end ignorance and misunderstanding, it's gonna end illiteracy. It's going to end war.— David Sarnoff,— in The Farnsworth Invention
The only difference between a Jew and a Christian is the superstitions to which they subscribe.— Spinoza. in David Ives' New Jerusalem
Why don't you kill yourself? Why don't you kill yourself? — B
I have thought of it. . . I am not unhappy enough. — A
From Rough For Theatre I— part of Beckett Shorts at NYTheatre Workshop
So imagine your body's a community, and your cells are the people who live there. The dream of every cell is to be immortal. . . to make endless copies of itself, but the community Can only use so many liver cells and no more than two eyes, so your cells need to cooperate. . . .— Dr. William Shumway in The Secret Order
It's remarkable, in fact, that the great majority of great men were also responsible for great carnage in their day. Even men who are only a little out of ordinary must be criminals by their very nature. Otherwise, they never rise above the masses, and they can't stand being part of the masses. .— Raskolnikov in a fascinating 3-actor Crime and Punishment
Dreams are life's coming attractions.— a line from a Feminine Ending, a new play by Sarah Treem
There's so much sheer confusion nowadays,
everybody gets fair shares of praise.
It makes the greatest honors seem quite petty
when they're flung about like cheap confetti.
Anyone at all! The lowest of the low
gets 15 minutes on a TV show.
— Alceste in Tony Harrison's translation of Moliere'sThe Misanthrope
God tells us to work, but . . .you put money into the bank and go to sleep, and the money will what do'you call it, will feed you while you sleep. It's filthy, that's what I call it; it's not right, it's against God— Akim after hearing Mitritch man explain the workings of interest to him.
Against God? Nobody cares about that nowadays—Mitrich
The Power of Darkness
There is a group determined to continue. What's been set in motion can't be stopped. —Agamemmnon in Iphigenia 2.0
Aeschylus and his Greek contemporaries believed that the Gods begrudged human success and would send a curse of hubris on a person at the height of their powers; a loss of sanity tat would eventually bring about their downfall. Nowadways, we give the Gods less credit. We prefer to call it self-destruction— James Reston, in Frost/Nixon
Nothing is simple. 'Simple's' not even simple anymore. Terry, commenting on his kid brother's psychobabbling promise to get his act together in Neil LaBute's world premiering play In a Dark Dark Place
It's such a comfort that all the rich people about here are Conservatives. I believe the same may be noticed in other parts of the country. It almost seems like a special Providence.— Lady Faringford in Lady Faringford, the slim, chic Lady Bracknell-like character in the Mint Theater's 's New York premiere of The Return of the Prodigal
Barry Champlain is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.—Linda, the volatile talk show host's assistant on her experience as his occasional lover in the Broadway revival of Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio.
There are two kinds of people in one's life—people whom one keeps waiting—and the people for whom one waits — Feydak in S. N. Behrman's Biography
History knocks at a thousand gates at every moment, and the gatekeeper is chance. It takes wit and courage to make our way, while our way is making us, with no consolation to count on but art and the summer lighting of personal happiness. . . Our meaning is in how we live in an imperfect world, in our time. We have no other.
— Alexander Herzen inin the conclusion of Tom Stoppard's trilogy Salvage.
Years from now, when you talk about this, and you will, be kind.—Laura, throwing the advice of the Headmistress to the wind in what's very much a case of famous last words in the Keen Company's revival of Tea and Sympathy.
So exactly what kind of style do YOU write in?— The retired ad executive-cum-playwright Henry to the young playwriting student he is interviewing to be his assistant.
Hopefully, if you were to see one of my plays, you wouldn't be able to define it as any one style at all—Len
Of Course! Experimental. Sure, why not, they do very well. Look at Beckett. One lucky break and now he's a genius.—Henry in The Last Word
I don't think the mess that's followed invalidates the original decision.
—Nadia, the American ex-foreign correspondent who believed in the Iraq war initially as a means for helping an oppressed people. in The Vertical Hour.
In real life, I pride myself on being neither good, nor dull. Not that I could tell you what real life consists of. . .when you leave a character's space, you feel more homesick than you do leaving any place real behind. Slow and empty, that's real life. — The Actor who plays Fernan, a building manager, in the play within A Spanish Play by Yasmina Rez (posted 2/01/07)
I am a woman who has no place to go, but I'm going, and after a while I will ask myself why I took my mother's two children to be my own.
Anna Berniers in Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic being given a lovely revival at the Pearl Theatre in the East Village (Posted 1/14/07)
I knew who the surgeon was going to be, so I had fair idea what the operation would look like.
—Oliver, the British doctor explaining why he was against the invasion from the start.
From the debate-like new David Hare play The Vertical Hour.
They say I was born with luck. They didn't say what kind.—Wolf in August Wilson's Two Trains Running.
It's up to us writers to be smart enough to come up with stuff that's going to sell. I don't have the energy to worry about this trend, or what producers are looking for, or what's selling and what's not. There are a lot of people buying tickets to the musical theater. And that's all I need to know.
—Adam Guettel (Floyd Collins, Light in the Piazza), Nelson Pressley Interview, "Born With a Golden Ear" in The Washington Post, 12/16/06 (posted 12/20/06)
Broadway may be a market-place, but the emergence of these two shows [Grey Gardens & Spring Awakening] proves that producers in that sector do not all fall into the category of unimaginative purveyors of what people already think that they want. Some are intent on giving the public what they do not yet know that they want.— Paul Taylor of GB's The Independent, after his whirlwind trip to review recent Broadway openings. (Posted 12/15/06)
Note:Eventually these quotes will migrate into one of our three quote archives: Quotes from Plays. . . Quotes by Theatrical Notables. . . Shakespeare's Little Instruction Book
Leonard Maltin's 2008 Movie Guide
Playbill 2007-08 Yearbook
