Ml Rio Quotes

For someone who loved words as much as I did, it was amazing how often they failed me.

You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.

But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.

How tremendous the agony of unmade decisions.

What is more important, that Caesar is assassinated or that he is assassinated by his intimate friends? … That,’ Frederick said, 'is where the tragedy is.

Per aspera ad astra. I’d heard a variety of translations, but the one I liked best was Through the thorns, to the stars.

One thing I'm sure Colborne will never understand is that I need language to live, like food—lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that, yes, there is a word for this. Someone else has felt it before.

Were you in love with him?' 'Yes,' I say, simply. James and I put each other through the kind of reckless passions Gwendolyn once talked about, joy and anger and desire and despair. After all that, was it really so strange? I am no longer baffled or amazed or embarrassed by it. 'Yes, I was.' It's not the whole truth. The whole truth is, I'm in love with him still.

It’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is, I’m in love with him still.

Actors are by nature volatile—alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster.

There is no comfort like complicity.

Which of us could say we were more sinned against than sinning? We were so easily manipulated - confusion made a masterpiece of us.

You were real to me. Sometimes I thought you were the only real thing.

I never asked where he went, worried he wouldn’t ask me to follow.

The things about Shakespeare is, he's so eloquent...he speaks the unspeakable. He turns grief and triumph and rapture and rage into words, into something we can understand. He renders the whole mystery of humanity comprehensible.

Secrets carry weight, like lead.

I don't know, it's like I look at you and suddenly the sonnets makes sense. The good ones, anyway.

For us, everything was a performance.” A small, private smile catches me off guard and I glance down, hoping he won’t see it. “Everything poetic.

James laughed brokenly, and I felt something deep between my lungs crack clean in two.

Hatred is the sincerest form of flattery.

Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?” The question is so unlikely, so nonsensical coming from such a sensible man, that I can’t suppress a smile. “I blame him for all of it.

When did we become such terrible people?” “Maybe we’ve always been terrible.

The future is wide and wild and full of promise, but it is precarious, too. Seize on every opportunity that comes your way and cling to it, lest it be washed back out to sea.

Imagine having all your own thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feelings of a whole other person. It can be hard, sometimes, to sort out which is which.

One sin, I know, another doth provoke; Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke.

We’re only ever playing fifty percent of a character. The rest is us, and we’re afraid to show people who we really are. We’re afraid of looking foolish if we reveal the full force of our emotions.

How could we explain that standing on a stage and speaking someone else's words as if they are your own is less an act of bravery than a desperate lunge at mutual understanding?

But in Shakespeare's world, passion is irresistible, not embarrassing.

The real sky was enormous overhead, making our mirrors and twinkling stage lights seem ridiculous- Man’s futile attempt to imitate God

I felt her sigh, and when she breathed her sadness out, I breathed it in.

Make art, make mistakes, and have no regrets.

Anything can feel like punishment if it’s taught poorly.

I seemed doomed to always play supporting roles in someone else’s story. Far too many times I had asked myself whether art was imitating life or if it was the other way around.

Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.

So what do you do? Ignore your grief, or indulge it?

You can’t quantify humanity. You can’t measure it—not the way you mean to. People are passionate and flawed and fallible. They make mistakes. Their memories fade. Their eyes deceive them.

We had, like seven siblings, spent so much time together that we had seen the best and worst of one another and were unimpressed by either.

But I stayed where I was, afraid to move toward him, afraid I might lose my footing on solid ground, detach from what had anchored me before and drift out into the void of space - a vagabond, wandering moon.

I am all too aware of my own desperate need to find a message in the madness, and as it takes shape I am suspicious, afraid to hope. But the implications of the text and its small part in our story are impossible to ignore, too critical for a scholar as meticulous as James to overlook.

When it was his turn to speak I watched him closely, uncertain whether he was acting only, or if he and I were both gnashing secrets between our teeth.

I knew by then the way the story went. Our little drama was rapidly hurtling towards its climactic crisis. What next, when we reached the precipice? First, the reckoning. Then, the fall.

I need language to live, like food—lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that, yes, there is a word for this. Someone else has felt it before.

He'd never been in my house and I was self-conscious, embarrassed by it. I was painfully aware of the fact that we didn't have enough books.

Something changed irrevocably, in those few dark minutes James was submerged, as if the lack of oxygen had caused all our molecules to rearrange.

He was too spotless to talk of blood and murder like Macbeth, but in the red glare of the fire he no longer looked so angelic. Instead he was handsome the way you think of the devil as handsome—forbiddingly so.

The water, too, was still, and I thought, what liars they are, the sky and the water. Still and calm and clear, like everything was fine. It wasn’t fine, and really, it never would be again.

You know, you scare the hell out of me [...] I don't know, it's like, I look at you and suddenly the sonnets make sense.

Nothing unites men like a common enemy.

Through the thorns, to the stars

There were seven of us then, seven bright young things with wide precious futures ahead of us, though we saw no farther than the books in front of our faces.

I’ve hope to live, and am prepared to die.

Was I not always his right-hand man, his lieutenant? Banquo or Benvolio or Oliver - little difference.

Nothing makes sense to him either. His whole world is falling apart, and once he realizes he can’t stop it or fix it or change it, there’s only one thing left to do.” My eyes adjusted slowly, maddeningly. “What’s that?” His shadow shrugged in the gloom. “Absolve yourself. Blame it on fate.

We were always surrounded by books and words and poetry, all the fierce passions of the world bound in leather and vellum. (I blame this in part for what happened.)

Oliver, I don’t understand,” he said. “Why?” “You know why.” I was done pretending otherwise.

When we first walked through those doors, we did so without knowing that we were now part of some strange fanatic religion where anything could be excused so long as it was offered at the altar of the Muses. Ritual madness, ecstasy, human sacrifice.

This,” James said, when he had disappeared. “This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars … as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting-on!

Everyone in the room was watching James—how could they not?—but I was the only one who really knew him, every inch.

From Hamlet. That’s what he reminded me of.” “Oh,” he said. “Not sure I can see him as a sparrow. Too . . . delicate.” “So what sort of bird would he be?” “Dunno. The sort that smacked into a window trying to have a go at its own reflection.

His voice sounded flat, wrong, as if someone had struck a false note on the piano.

I am wretched. Destitute.

What did she want to tell me that was so tremendous it had drawn tears from her, a woman made of marble?

My martyrdom is not the selfless kind. I can't look at Filippa, shamed by all the injuries I've inflicted- like a man with a bomb strapped to his chest, ready to blow himself up without a thought for the collateral damage.

Whatever we did—or, more crucially, did not do—it seemed that so long as we did it together, our individual sins might be abated. There is no comfort like complicity.

Like she’s a shark and you’re an oblivious fur seal.” Me: “Why is that the word everyone’s using to describe me lately?” James: “Who else called you a fur seal?” Me: “Not that. Never mind.

I was seized by the strange unfounded idea that she was debating whether or not to say I love you. But the difference between us was that she assumed people just knew these sorts of things, while I always worried that they didn’t.

I have nothing of my own now, not even secrets.

if you haven’t made any enemies in life, you’ve been living too safely. And that is what I wish to discourage

We cracked up", I say, but the phrase feels wrong. It was not so simple, or as clean, as a piece of fractured glass. "But we didn't really shatter until we were all back together again.

You know everyone calls you 'nice'...but that's not the word. You're good. So good you have no idea how good you are.

You want me to stay?” I asked. I didn’t want to leave him. “Please,” he said, in a small voice. “I just couldn’t deal with the rest of them, for a while.

I had hoped you might be my Banquo.

What is more important, that Caesar is assassinated or that he is assassinated by his intimate friends?

Sleep crawled on top of me like an affectionate, purring pet-

There are things they don’t tell you about such beautiful places—that they’re as dangerous as they are beautiful.

She says, "Were you love in him?" "Yes" I say, simply. After all that, was it so strange? I am no longer baffled, or amazed, or embarrassed by it. "Yes I was" It wasn't the whole truth. The whole truth is, I am in love with him still.

How could we explain that standing on a stage and speaking someone else’s words as if they are your own is less an act of bravery than a desperate lunge at mutual understanding? An attempt to forge that tenuous link between speaker and listener and communicate something, anything, of substance.

Maybe every day we let grief in, we’ll also let a little bit of it out, and eventually we’ll be able to breathe again. At least, that’s how Shakespeare would tell the story. Hamlet says, ‘Absent thee from felicity awhile’. But just awhile. The show’s not over. ‘Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight’. The rest of us must go on.

Far too many times I had asked myself whether art was imitating life or if it was the other way around.

Absolve yourself. Blame it on fate.

First, the reckoning. Then, the fall.

His arm fell lifelessly to his side. He looked away and said, “Oliver, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I want to hurt the whole world.

Forgive me?” “Yeah,” I said, a split second too late. “Always.

My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,” he said. “Because it is an enemy to thee.” The balcony scene. Too mistrustful to guess at the meaning, I said, “Don’t do that, James, please—right now can we just be ourselves?” He crouched down, lifted the mangled script from the floor. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s easier now to be Romeo, or Macbeth, or Brutus, or Edmund. Someone else.

Instead he was handsome the way you think of the devil as handsome-forbiddingly so.

He drowned himself on the last day of December, and though the local authorities dragged the freezing water for days and miles, his body was never found.

It’s like Romeo and Juliet.

People always forget about Filippa,” I add. “And later they always wish they hadn’t.

In that brief one moment, I actually wondered if “okay” or something like it might still be possible. But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.

What are you thinking about?’ I said, ‘The same thing you’re thinking about.’ We didn’t even need to say your name.” She frowns down into the red pool of her wine. “It was just a kiss, but God, it hurt like hell.

This is the sort of game where people get hurt.

I knew you better than you knew yourself. I was terrified you’d do exactly what you did.

Only three of us left. James, Richard, me. Gunpowder, fire, fuse.

He was the sort of actor everyone fell in love with as soon as he stepped onstage, and I was no exception.

The sky was clear and quiet, stars peering curiously down at us from a wide dome of indigo. The water, too, was still, and I thought, what liars they are, the sky and the water. Still and calm and clear, like everything was fine. It wasn't fine, and really, it never would be again.

He stared up at me for a moment, then lifted his head and pulled me down to meet him. It was almost a brotherly kiss, but not quite. Too fragile, too painful. Soft whispers of surprise and confusion swept through the audience. My heart throbbed, and it hurt so badly that I bit his lip. I felt his breath catch and let him go, lowered him to the floor again. Silence lingered overlong.

Shakespeare is real, but his characters live in a world of real extremes. They swing from ecstasy to anguish, love to hate, wonder to terror. It’s not melodrama, though, they’re not exaggerating. Every moment is crucial.

Tomorrow, if he tries anything, instead of assassination we give him a righteous ass-kicking.” “Here is my hand,” James said, after a split second’s hesitation. “The deed is worthy doing.” I hesitated also, a split second longer. “And so say I.

Alas, the sea hath cast me on the rock, Wash’d me from shore to shore, and left me breath Nothing to think on but ensuing death. What I have been I have forgot to know; But what I am, want teaches me to think on: A man throng’d up with cold: my veins are chill, And have no more of life than may suffice To give my tongue that heat to ask your help; Which if you shall refuse, when I am dead, For that I am a man, pray see me burièd.

Enter the players. There were seven of us, seven bright young things with wide precious futures ahead of us, though we saw no farther than the books in front of our faces. We were always surrounded by books and words and poetry, all the fierce passions of the world bound in leather and vellum. The castle library was an airy octagonal room, walled with bookshelves, crowed with sumptuous old furniture, and kept drowsily warm by a monumental fireplace that burned almost constantly, regardless of the temperature outside. The clock on the mantel struck twelve, and we stirred, one by one, like seven statues coming to life.