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As I get older and I get a few more years experience I become more like Dad, you know, King Lear. -- David Crystal
You have to get through the Hamlet hoop as a young actor. Your classical qualifications are based on the quality of your Hamlet. And then, as an older actor, you have to get through the Lear hoop. And I'm approaching the Lear hoop. -- Derek Jacobi
I've played Lear three times, I would love to do it again. -- David Ogden Stiers
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
Shakespeare wrote all there is that we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear.' -- Simon Callow
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
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Norman Lear considers almost any Christian who speaks up for and acts on his or her faith to be 'dangerous.' -- Donald Wildmon
I have no desire to play King Lear or Hamlet. I never had a grand ambition. I just followed my nose. -- Liam Neeson
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 think that if Shakespeare had had access to CGI, he would have used it. Imagine Lear conjuring the storm and the lightning. -- Julie White
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
Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon The author of Lear remains unshaken Willie Herbert or Mary Fitton What does it matter? The Sonnets were written. -- Noel Coward
I think I'm going to have to get a flying license very soon, and maybe one of those Lear jets. It beats motorcycles all to hell. -- Hunter S. Thompson
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
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
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
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
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've been lucky to get some path-breaking films, which proved to be the turning point in my career. Be it 'Rock on!' 'The Last Lear' or 'Raajneeti,' directors started working in a different way. -- Arjun Rampal
I think I have a finely tuned sense of humor. I think just being around it and growing up in it... my dad and Mel Brooks and Norman Lear. These are the people I grew up around. -- Rob Reiner
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
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
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
We might not object to the statement that Lear deserved to suffer for his folly, selfishness and tyranny; but to assert that he deserved to suffer what he did suffer is to do violence not merely to language but to any healthy moral sense. -- Andrew Coyle Bradley
I'm still producing scripted features, and I am already working on a new documentary project with Norman Lear and Lara Bergthold. It is about the Declaration of Independence and the relevance of the document today. And it will be fun and engaging - I promise! -- Linda Goldstein Knowlton
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
Whenever I say I made a record in the garage, people just assume that I have, like, a Lear jet parked in there or something. But really there's old luggage, a couple of bikes. It's big enough to put one minivan in. That's it. No dartboard. I'm so not macho. -- Dave Grohl
When I turned 18, was the first time that I really started concentrating on politics. And I started doing so because I realized that in order to really create and generate change, it has to come from changing laws... so I started campaigning for Norman Lear's foundation, which was Declare Yourself. -- Hayden Panettiere
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
A laughing Lear would be monstrous. Not so a laughing Romeo and Juliet. -- Mason Cooley
Shakespeare wrote all there is that we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear. -- Simon Callow
Shakespeare without Othello, Lear, Macbeth and Hamlet would be all too much like Hamlet without the prince. -- Brand Blanshard
I would like to do 'King Lear.' But I would like to do it in Swedish. -- Max von Sydow
I think Shakespeare got drunk after he finished King Lear. That he had a ball writing it. -- Louis Auchincloss
The only time I've played a real baddy was when I was Regan in 'King Lear.' -- Ashley Jensen
To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago. -- Roger Zelazny
To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, I wish I had known this some time ago. -- Roger Zelazny
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
In a very real way Norman [Lear] godfathered me into my career. He was the best mentor anybody could have ever had. -- Richard Masur
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
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
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
When I was growing up my favorite show was 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show', and I loved all the stuff that Norman Lear did. -- Ryan Murphy
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
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
Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call. -- William Butler Yeats
What is your name?" asked Lear. Caius," said Kent. And whence do you hail?" From Bonking, sire." Well, yes, lad, as do we all," said Lear, "but from what town? -- Christopher Moore
Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce. -- William Butler Yeats
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I do not see how it is possible for an intelligent human being to conclude that the Song of Solomon is the work of God, and that the tragedy of Lear was the work of an uninspired man. -- Robert Green Ingersoll
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
I would love to be remembered as one of the greatest Lears or Hamlets. -- Roger Moore
O, let me kiss that hand! KING LEAR: Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality. -- William Shakespeare
And worse I may be yet: the worst is not So long as we can say 'This is the worst. -- William Shakespeare
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
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
In Shakespeare's world, characters cannot trust their senses. Is the ghost in Hamlet true and truthful, or is it a demon, tempting young Hamlet into murderous sin? Is Juliet dead or merely sleeping? Does Lear really stand at the edge of a great cliff? Or has the Fool deceived him to save his life? -- Virginia Postrel
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
We become lovers when we see Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet makes us students. The blood of Duncan is upon our hands, with Timon werage against the world, and when Lear wanders out upon the heath the terror of madness touches us. Ours is the white sinlessness of Desdemona, and ours, also, the sin of Iago. -- Oscar Wilde
Any idiot would know women's needs are simple. All we want is your basic millionaire brain surgeon criminal lawyer great dancer who pilots his own Lear Jet and owns seafront property. On the other hand, things being what they are today, most of us will settle for a guy who holds down a steady job and isn't carrying an infectious disease. -- Linda Sunshine
Hollywood maids' are so idiotic. They grin at everything. I told Norman Lear I didn't want to play a maid because of that 'hee-hee/grin-grin' attitude, and he said, 'Who said I wanted that?' He told me he wanted two strong women that are the black and white of the same coin. I said, 'Oh, well - in that case, I'll be right there!' -- Esther Rolle
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

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