"The play's the thing."
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"I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine is a sad one."
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"The day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth serene and triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair."
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"I had no idea of the enormous and unquestionably helpful part that humbug plays in the social life of great peoples dwelling in a state of democratic freedom."
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"When I'm writing something, if there's a part that's good for me, then I'll play it. Otherwise, I don't. And I notice that there are less and less parts for me in my own writing."
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"I spend a lot of time idly. I go to sporting events, play my clarinet. I practise. But if you work every day, a certain amount on a steady basis, the work accumulates."
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"My ambition when I started out was to play two or three gigs a week. And that's what I'm doing."
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"The usual dog about the town is much inclined to play the clown."
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"I've never thought about any kind of prejudice about women in country music because I never felt like it affected me. I was fortunate enough to come about in a time when I didn't feel that kind of energy at all, and it was always my theory that if you want to play in the same ballgame as the boys, you've got to work as hard as them."
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"I think, a lot of times when you meet someone, you feel like you need to appear like you're not interested in them so that they'll be more interested in you. But what happens when you start showing him that you actually like him? What's he gonna do then? Play the tape forward; how do you keep a guy like that? I don't want to sign up for that."
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"I wanted us to have a friendly relationship [with Kanye West]. He promised to play the song for me, but he never did."
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"In my opinion, the only way to conquer stage fright is to get up on stage and play. Every time you play another show, it gets better and better."
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"The secret of poetry is never explained,— is always new. We have not got farther than mere wonder at the delicacy of the touch, and the eternity it inherits. In every house a child that in mere play utters oracles, and knows not that they are such. 'T is as easy as breath. 'T is like this gravity, which holds the Universe together, and none knows what it is."
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"I can make things happen when plays break down."
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"It is, perhaps more than anything else, the arrest of time which has taken place in a completed work of art that gives certain plays their feeling of depth and significance."
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"Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!"
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"It is a hopeless endeavour to unite the contrarieties of spring and winter; it is unjust to claim the privileges of age, and retain the play-things of childhood."
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"The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercized in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions."
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"One of the people I've always wanted to emulate in pursuing that dream was Meryl Streep, in terms of the different types of roles she's been able to play and the number of different stories she's been able to tell."
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"Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in."
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