Play quotes
12.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside play — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"It's strange, 'cause a play, you start at the beginning and you go all the way through to the end. So it's naturally very well rehearsed and you get a rhythm and a flow. In film, you can shoot the ending before the beginning. It's very odd. And it's like a craft you have to learn."
"It was an audition process after Breakfast Club, and I wasn't really sure I wanted to do the movie. There was a bigger role that Rob [Lowe] was already set to play, so the role they wanted me to audition for was Alec. [Director] Joel Schumacher... this is back in the days when you could trick me with things like this. He goes, "Don't you think you can play it?" And I go, "Okaaaaay." So then I did it for all the wrong reasons but I don't think I would fall for that again. Who knows. I might."
"I got to play Santa, too. It's really important to play Santa, you know."
"I worked with the late Leonard Frey. I did a play, and I would have these ideas and he would say, "I don't know. Try it." And I would try it and it would be awful, and he would go, "What do you think?" And I would go, "It was awful." And he goes, "Okay, we'll try something else." And that's great because it really makes you feel less working-for and more working-with. There's nothing better than to feel a part of the team."
"You have to be so confident and so gifted to fill five minutes of nothing at the very beginning of a play before even a word is uttered."
"One struggles always with these norms. So one doesn't construct oneself freely without respect to norm but one works with one's historical situation and sees where there might be some play. Where there might be some freedom to move."
"I think where you play is important."
"What does it mean then to live with one another? It can be unhappy, it can be wretched, it can be ambivalent, it can even be full of antagonism, but all of that can play out in the political sphere without recourse to expulsion or genocide. And that is our obligation, to stay in the sphere with whatever murderous rage we have, without acting on it."
"A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit; Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child; Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts; Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds."
"What is contrary to women's nature to do, they never will be made to do by simply giving their nature free play."
"We Play the broken string of our instruments one last time"
"If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out — since our self-image is untenable — their false notions of us… We play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us."
"If you're talented enough and play long enough, and put up numbers, you'll get to the Hall of Fame. That doesn't make you a World Series winner."
"For me personally it doesn't matter who is the manager, I'm going to go out there and play for the manager, and play for this uniform as a team."
"I've always wanted to play a soldier and I'd never taken on a character where I'm the happy-go-lucky protagonist. I've played a lot of jerks recently."
"Some musicians play blues, others classical jazz or bluegrass. I like to play political roles because I can merge my political interests with my creative interests."
"I like the atmosphere. You can't beat it when you're introduced. I like making a play and hearing the fans scream. I like the physical as well as the emotional aspect, especially when you win."
"If there is a species which is more maltreated than children, then it must be their toys, which they handle in an incredibly off-hand manner. Toys are thus the end point in that long chain in which all the conditions of despotic high-handedness are in play which enchain beings one to another, from one species to another --cruel divinities to their sacrificial victims, from masters to slaves, from adults to children, and from children to their objects."
"I think, without question, the way someone plays sports shows something about inherently who they are, you know?"
"Language always preserves a play or figure/ground relation between experience, and perception and its replay in expression."
