hamlet

The Play's the Thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.

This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

The rest is silence.

I am haunted by the ghost of my father, I think that should allow me to quote Hamlet as much as I please.

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.

Act _ make an event. Smash the coordinates and see where the smithereens fly. Let in the madness, and be sure to be a danger to oneself and others. Too much thinking turns you into that fool Hamlet.

Hamlet promised himself he__ throw down afterward, but I think perhaps when he said, __rom this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!_ the limits of blank verse weakened his resolve somehow. If he__ been free to follow the dictates of his conscience rather than the pen of Shakespeare, perhaps he would have abandoned verse altogether, like me, and contented himself with this instead: __ring it, muthafuckas. Bring it.

We defy augury. There is special providence inthe fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not tocome, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come__hereadiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is'tto leave betimes, let be. (Hamlet 5.2.217-224)

To die, to sleep - To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub,For in this sleep of death what dreams may come...

ROSENCRANTZ My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king.HAMLET The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing -GUILDENSTERN A thing my lord?HAMLET Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after!

such wanton, wild, and usual slips/ As are companions noted and most known/ To youth and liberty.

If a story is no good, being based on Hamlet won't save it.

We know what we are, but not what we may be.

I do believe you think what now you speak,But what we do determine oft we break.Purpose is but the slave to memory,Of violent birth, but poor validity,Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.Most necessary __is that we forgetTo pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.What to ourselves in passion we propose,The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.

...imagine anybody having lived forty-five or fifty years without knowing Hamlet! One might as well spend one's life in a coal mine.