King Lear quotes:

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Shakespeare wrote all there is that we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear.' -- Simon Callow
I would like to do 'King Lear.' But I would like to do it in Swedish. -- Max von Sydow
The only time I've played a real baddy was when I was Regan in 'King Lear.' -- Ashley Jensen
I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal. -- Peter Ustinov
I've made a dog's breakfast of English history, geography, 'King Lear,' and the English language in general. -- Christopher Moore
As I get older and I get a few more years experience I become more like Dad, you know, King Lear. -- David Crystal
I have no desire to play King Lear or Hamlet. I never had a grand ambition. I just followed my nose. -- Liam Neeson
When you're playing King Lear, you have to have a little humour, or you will have no tragedy when the king dies. -- Robert Wilson
My favorite-ever version of 'King Lear' is the 1971 film by Peter Brooks. He has this enormous fur thing, and it adds enormous gravitas. -- Ben Mendelsohn
The actor is too prone to exaggerate his powers; he wants to play Hamlet when his appearance is more suitable to King Lear. -- Sarah Bernhardt
I'm mainly an airport author, and if you're trying to take your mind off the journey, you're not going to read 'King Lear.' -- Maeve Binchy
To watch King Lear is to approach the recognition that there is indeed no meaning in life, and that there are limits to human understanding. -- Peter Ackroyd
If you are playing King Lear you are the centre of attention anyway. You don't need to draw attention to yourself. It's all laid out for you. -- Ian Mckellen
There isn't a King Lear for women, or a Henry V, or a Richard III. You reach a level where you can handle that stuff technically and mentally, and it's not there. -- Helen Mirren
I don't think of 'Macbeth' as the villain. I don't think of 'King Lear' as the villain. I don't think of 'Hamlet' as the villain. I don't think of 'Travis Bickle' as the villain. -- Damien Chazelle
I used to think 'King Lear' was an analysis of insanity, but I don't really think it is. When Lear is supposed to be at his most insane, he is actually understanding the world for the first time. -- Ian Mckellen
I think you have to find the humanity in the character and then the deterioration is a part of the process - the journey of the character. It's like playing King Lear. You can start off as a nice old man who finishes up crazy. -- David Wenham
King Lear,' I've been seeing all my life. I mean, the great actors of my lifetime... to join their company, as it were, by playing a part that's challenged them, is one of the great joys of being an actor who does the classics. -- Ian Mckellen
I guess if they ever do a remake of 'Sophie's Choice,' I could play the Meryl Streep part. I've got to work on my Polish accent. Maybe I'll be the definitive King Lear one day. You know, if they ever feel that King Lear should be more Jewy. -- Gilbert Gottfried
People talk about the difference between radio acting, TV acting and stage acting, but I think it's all the same. For instance, when I played Vultan in 'Flash Gordon,' I put as much energy into it as I would with 'King Lear' - it's all part of the same thing. -- Brian Blessed
I look at it like this: that if Shakespeare were alive today, he would have written two or three plays about the Kennedy family, and actors would traditionally play JFK like they Hamlet or King Lear. They just would. I mean, people have played JFK, and they'll play him long after I have. -- Rob Lowe
I was at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where I thought, in my naivete, I'd stay for the rest of my career. I'd thought I'd work up through the ranks and go from spear carrier - or in my case, the eunuch, which was several rungs below the spear carrier - to King Lear. -- Christian McKay
I've never been that guy who says, 'Ooh, I have to play King Lear'. First off, that'd be a disaster anyway. I tend to read something and see who's involved, and then know I want to be part of it. But I don't think I'm through with comedy. I still love to make people laugh. -- Ted Danson
I did a lot of theatre when I started out. It was the Lyceum, the Citz, the Tron and the Traverse. I came to London and did the Royal Court, the National, 'King Lear' at the Manchester Royal Exchange. I did little bits of comedy, like 'Rab C Nesbitt,' but I wasn't predominantly about comedy. -- Ashley Jensen
Young screenwriters are always very frustrated when they talk to me. They say, 'How do we get to be a screenwriter?' I say, 'You know what you do? I'll tell you the secret, it's easy: Read 'Hamlet.' You know? Then read it again, and read it again, and read it until you understand it. Read 'King Lear,' and then read 'Othello.' -- John Logan
I never understand when people say, 'Do you do comedy or tragedy?' I don't think they're very much different. They both have to be true, and there isn't a great play in the world that doesn't have funny parts to it - as 'Salesman' does, as 'King Lear' does. The whole idea is to reflect life in some way, which means surely you have to have both. -- Mike Nichols
Shakespeare wrote all there is that we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear. -- Simon Callow
I feel like I've been on EastEnders all my life and now I'm playing King Lear. -- Ian Holloway
I want to keel over on stage playing King Lear at age 99 or something like that. -- Rainn Wilson
I think Shakespeare got drunk after he finished King Lear. That he had a ball writing it. -- Louis Auchincloss
Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy laws my services are bound...{His second motto, from King Lear by Shakespeare} -- Carl Friedrich Gauss
Complaining about boring football is a little like complaining about the sad ending of King Lear: it misses the point somehow. -- Nick Hornby
Counterfeit Kings is the King Lear of space operas. Science fiction has a fresh, new, no-nonsense voice and his name is Adam Connell. -- Steven-Elliot Altman
From the American retelling of Romeo and Juliet in West Side Story to the Japanese adaptation of King Lear in Ran, Shakespeare's cultural influence is virtually limitless. -- Gordon Smith
It isn't difficult to leave King Lear or Macbeth, but once you have gone back to yourself, you want it to be the same self you have always been. -- Paul Scofield
When I closed in "King Lear" I went into a period of depression for about three weeks, and every actor I've talked to who's ever played a major, major Shakespeare role has done this. -- Frank Langella
The Oresteia, King Lear, Dostoevsky's The Devils no less than the art of Giotto or the Passions of Bach, inquire into, dramatize, the relations of man and woman to the existence of the gods or of God. -- George Steiner
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A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were written. -- Thomas Jefferson
Directing Skyfall was one of the best experiences of my professional life, but I have theatre and other commitments, including productions of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and King Lear, that need my complete focus over the next year and beyond. -- Sam Mendes
If I had written King Lear, I would regret it all my life afterwards. Because that work is so big, that its defects show as huge, its monstrous defects, things even minimal in between some scenes and their possible perfection. It's not the sun with spots; it's a broken greek statue. -- Fernando Pessoa
It's difficult for most people to imagine the creative process in tennis. Seemingly it's just an athletic matter of hitting the ball consistently well within the boundaries of the court. That analysis is just as specious as thinking that the difficulty in portraying King Lear on stage is learning all the lines. -- Virginia Wade
Bush has not read enough books to have a developed moral sense. The fewer books you read, the easier it is to become fundamental. In some ways my antiwar stand here is also a stand on anti-literacy. Someone should get G.W. into a reading program, get him to join a book club. Have him read Hamlet, King Lear. -- Sherman Alexie
I don't remember much about the specifics of the economics courses that I majored in - I apparently internalized the key concepts - but I still remember vividly the thrill of reading 'Don Quixote,' Epictetus, 'The Aeneid,' 'King Lear' and 'Candide,' and how contemporary the stories and ideas in these old and ancient texts struck me. -- Daniel S. Loeb
O, let me kiss that hand! KING LEAR: Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality. -- William Shakespeare

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