The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays.
--
Vladimir Nabokov, quoted in interview with Alfred Appel, Jr. (September 1966), printed in Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature 8 (1967); republished in Nabokov's Strong Opinions (1973).William Shakespeare
» William Shakespeare - all quotes »
The Geschick of being: a child that plays... Why does it play, the great child of the world-play Heraclitus brought into view in the aiôn? It plays, because it plays. The "because" withers away in the play. The play is without "why." It plays since it plays. It simply remains a play: the most elevated and the most profound. But this "simply" is everything, the one, the only... The question remains whether and how we, hearing the movements of this play, play along and accommodate ourselves to the play.
Martin Heidegger
There is abundant evidence in Stoppard’s plays to show that he is as capable of emotion as anybody. In Enter A Free Man Linda is a finely tuned moral invention whose equivalents we might well miss in the later plays, if we really thought they should be there. The mainspring of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is the perception—surely a compassionate one—that the fact of their deaths mattering so little to Hamlet was something which ought to have mattered to Shakespeare.
Clive James
Well, all the plays that I was trying to write … were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion which you could observe and walk away from.
Arthur Miller
Reagan plays with fire. He doesn't care about international peace. He plays as if he was in the theater. Reagan wants to dominate the world. He wants to find justification to make war. If he does this, if it goes on like this, a cataclysm will take place. Reagan should come and see that I am not a terrorist in a trench with a grenade in my pocket.
Muammar Gaddafi
Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.
Friedrich von Schiller
Shakespeare, William
Shakur, Tupac
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z