“How much an ill word may empoison liking.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 3.1
Month: October 2025
“The pleasant’st angling is to see the fish cut with her golden oars the silver stream, and greedily devour the treacherous bait.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 3.1
“Doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 2.3
“Happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 2.3
“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more; men were deceivers ever; one foot in sea and one on shore, to one thing constant never; then sigh not so, but let them go, and be you blithe and bonny; converting all your sounds of woe into, Hey nonny, nonny.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 2.3
“Friendship is constant in all other things save in the office and affairs of love.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 2.1
“Wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly modest as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 2.1
“What need the bridge much broader than the flood! The fairest grant is the necessity. Look, what will serve is fit.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 1.1
“How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping?” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 1.1
“A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 1.1
“Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over . . . Death is not anything . . . death is not . . . It’s the absence of presence, nothing more . . . the endless time of never coming back . . . a gap you can’t see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound . . .” – Tom Stoppard, Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
“Life is a gamble, at terrible odds—if it was a bet you wouldn’t take it.” – Tom Stoppard, Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
“As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don’t know what death is, it is illogical to fear it. It might be . . . very nice. Certainly it is a release from the burdens of life.” – Tom Stoppard, Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
“You can’t act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen—it’s not gasps and blood and falling about—that isn’t what makes it death. It’s just a man failing to reappear, that’s all—now you see him, now you don’t, that’s the only thing that’s real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back.” – Tom Stoppard, Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (emphasis in original)
“What the actors do best. They have to exploit whatever talent is given to them, and their talent is dying. They can die heroically, comically, ironically, slowly, suddenly, disgustingly, charmingly, or from a great height.” – Tom Stoppard, Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
“Death followed by eternity . . . the worst of both worlds.” – Tom Stoppard, Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
“We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the words for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied and squalling with the knowledge that for all the compasses in the world, there’s only one direction, and time is its only measure.” – Tom Stoppard, Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
“Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It’s the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn’t make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.” – Tom Stoppard, Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
“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.” – Tom Stoppard, Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
“The scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a defence against the pure emotion of fear. Keep tight hold and continue while there’s time.” – Tom Stoppard, Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
“Methods limit you as soon as you recognize them. Then you have to find another form to free yourself.” – Joy Williams, “The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review
“The Bible is constantly making use of image beyond words. A parable provides the imagery by means of words. The meaning, however, does not lie in the words but in the imagery. What is conjured, as it were, transcends words completely and speaks in another language. This is how Kafka wrote, why we are so fascinated by him, why he speaks so universally. On the other hand, there’s Blake, who spoke of the holiness of minute particulars. That is the way as well, to give voice to those particulars. Seek and praise, fear and seek. Don’t be vapid.” – Joy Williams, “The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review
“Cultural diversity can never replace biodiversity, though we’re being prompted to think it can. We live and spawn and want—always there is this ghastly wanting—and we have done irredeemable harm to so much. Perhaps the novel will die and even the short story because we’ll become so damn sick of talking about ourselves.” – Joy Williams, “The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review
“We continue to suppress, ignore the horror, the cruelty, the evil of the slaughterhouse. Such a simple thing, to not take part in such evil, yet the carnage continues and we find it quite acceptable. We are complicit, materially preoccupied, spiritually impoverished, and technologically possessed. Look what we did to the Earth when it was green and provident. We’ll suck it to the bone.” – Joy Williams, “The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review
“The writer has to be responsible to signs and dreams. Receptive and responsible. If you don’t do anything with it, you lose it. You stop getting these omens.” – Joy Williams, “The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review
“What a story is, is devious. It pretends transparency, forthrightness. It engages with ordinary people, ordinary matters, recognizable stuff. But this is all a masquerade. What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibility of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophes.” – Joy Williams, “The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review
“Nationalism is collective madness, a form of narcissism with millions preening in front of an imaginary mirror, telling themselves they are God’s favorites. Their happiness can only come from the unhappiness of others, so they need to kill and make miserable a lot of people. At the same time there’s something suicidal, something self-defeating about the whole enterprise. Sooner or later they always come to a bad end.” – Charles Simic, “The Art of Poetry,” Paris Review
“I write to annoy God, to make Death laugh. I write because I can’t get it right. I write because I want every woman in the world to fall in love with me.” – Charles Simic, “The Art of Poetry,” Paris Review
“We are a country of millions of fools, who believe the most imbecile things about ourselves and the world.” – Charles Simic, “The Art of Poetry,” Paris Review
“Even when I’m stretched out in my coffin they may find me tinkering with some poem. Even published poems I won’t leave alone. I very rarely get it right in one go. Mostly I revise endlessly. I don’t keep old drafts, but I imagine in some cases they must number into the hundreds. There’s a danger in endlessly tinkering like that. I’ve ruined many poems, took all the life out of them by not letting them remain a bit awkward, nonsensical, and inept. At times, such ‘weaknesses’ give the poem whatever charm it has, but it’s not easy to know until one tries to improve it.” – Charles Simic, “The Art of Poetry,” Paris Review