Doing Quotes (page 674)
What we’re trying to do is write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might … travel … ([He] picks up the script.) Now, what we’ve got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball would travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting ‘Ouch!’ with your hands stuck into your armpits. (indicating the cricket bat) This isn’t better because someone says it’s...
Tom Stoppard
In their opinion, a tragedy with so little plot could not conform with the rules of drama. I enquired whether they were complaining that they had found my play boring. I was told that none of them was bored, that they were often touched by it, and that they would go and see it again with pleasure. What more do they want?
Jean Racine
What about San Francisco?"What about it?"Did you like it?"She shrugged. "It was O.K."Just O.K.?"She laughed. "Good God!"What?"You're all alike here."How so?" he asked."You demand adoration for the place. You're not happy until everybody swears undying love for every nook and cranny of every precious damn --"Whoa, missy."Well, it's true. Can't you just worship it on your own? Do I have to sign an affadavit?"He chuckled. "We're that bad, are we?"You bet your ass you are.
Armistead Maupin
When someone is seeking,” said Siddartha, “It happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many...
Herman Hesse
How I have tried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how destiny has been against me! ...I do not deserve my lot! ...O, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived world! I was capable of much; but I have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control! O, how hard it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to heaven at all!
Thomas Hardy
Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales;...
Gilbert K. Chesterton