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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead QUOTES

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead QUOTES

1 " Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving? "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

2 " We're actors — we're the opposite of people! "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

3 " Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat.
Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats.
Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

4 " For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

5 " 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. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

6 " 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. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

7 " We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

8 " Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

9 " Uncertainty is the normal state. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

10 " 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. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

11 " You can't treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

12 " Free to move, speak, extemporize, and yet. We have not been cut loose. Our truancy is defined by one fixed star, and our drift represents merely a slight change of angle to it: we may seize the moment, toss it around while the moments pass, a short dash here, an exploration there, but we are brought round full circle to face again the single immutable fact -- "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

13 " Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are...condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one - that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost. 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; his two-fold security. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

14 " We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

15 " There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

16 " Life is a gamble, at terrible odds. If it were a bet you wouldn’t take it. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

17 " Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end? "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

18 " Pirates could happen to anyone. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

19 " We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

20 " Words, words. They're all we have to go on. "

― , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead