Quotes from Rosencrantz and 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, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it. ”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“We're actors — we're the opposite of people!”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking: Well, at least I'm not dead.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway.
Guildenstern: What?
Rosencrantz: England.
Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then? ”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Life is a gamble, at terrible odds. If it were a bet you wouldn’t take it.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Whatever became of the moment
when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood, when it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one's memory. And yet I can't remember it. It never occurred to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it, before we know that there are words,out we come, bloodied and squalling...with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction
and time is its only measure.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Words, words. They're all we have to go on.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“The colours red, blue and green are real. The colour yellow is a mystical experience shared by everybody.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“It would have been nice to have had unicorns.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until--"My God," says a second man, "I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn." At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience... "Look, look!" recites the crowd. "A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“ ...reality, the name we give to the common experience.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction. And time is its only measure.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are...condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one - that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost. A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; his two-fold security. ”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Rosencrantz: Shouldn't we be doing something--constructive?
Guildenstern: What did you have in mind? ... A short, blunt human pyramid...?”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Audiences know what to expect, and that is all that they are prepared to believe in.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Give us this day our daily mask.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one’s memory. And yet, I can’t remember it.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Actors! The mechanics of cheap melodrama! That isn't death! You scream and choke and sink to your knees but it doesn't bring death home to anyone- it doesn't catch them unawares and start the whisper in their skulls that says- 'One day you are going to die.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

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