Macbeth quotes:

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I was in a production of 'Macbeth.' -- Richard C. Armitage
'Macbeth' was a very lucky play for me. -- Ian Mckellen
Performing a one-man Macbeth feels like the greatest challenge. -- Alan Cumming
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I'd make a wonderful Lady Macbeth. I'll wear a pair of platform shoes or something. -- Bette Midler
Macbeth is contending with the realities of this world, Hamlet with those of the next. -- Jones Very
When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part. -- Laurence Olivier
If Shakespeare had to go on an author tour to promote Romeo and Juliet, he never would have written Macbeth. -- Joyce Brothers
Maybe because I'm a nice and sweet person in life, I like the darker roles. The really dark one is Lady Macbeth. -- Anna Netrebko
To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be. -- Max Beerbohm
Sometimes I wake up and think, 'I want to look like Sherlock Holmes today,' and other times I want to look like a witch from 'Macbeth.' -- Edie Campbell
I've never ever read a script. I really must read Macbeth, because I was in it once. I got a lot of laughs in that, I can tell you. -- Tom Baker
The only still center of my life is Macbeth. To go back to doing this bloody, crazed, insane mass-murderer is a huge relief after trying to get my cell phone replaced. -- Patrick Stewart
In the theatre, if you say 'Macbeth', all the actors will start looking very anxious. I'm so well-trained not to say it in the theatre that I can hardly say it in normal life. -- Anna Chancellor
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
And you know, I hate to admit this, but I don't always think in terms of Shakespeare. When I eat, I do. When I'm at a restaurant, I'll think, 'Hmm, what would Macbeth have ordered?' -- Liev Schreiber
Richard III is not likeable. Macbeth is not likeable. Hamlet is not likeable. And yet you can't take your eyes off them. I'm far more interested in that than I am in any sort of likeability. -- Beau Willimon
Sometimes I want to have a mental book burning that would scour my mind clean of all the filthy visions literature has conjured there. But how to do without 'The Illiad?' How to do without 'Macbeth?' -- Geraldine Brooks
Macbeth is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of Macbeth. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting. -- Ian Mckellen
When you are at the right age to play Hamlet you are still to young and immature to play it. It is much later, when you get the life experience and the emotional power, that you understand Hamlet or Macbeth. -- Anthony Hopkins
I did a production of Macbeth in the 1960s in which I had a swordfight in the final scene. But the blade fell off my sword just as I was stabbing the guy. I ended up having to hammer him to death. -- Alan Dale
If you think about Shakespeare, you remember Richard III and Macbeth before you remember Ferdinand, whose role is just to fall in love and be a bit of a wimp. I love the baddies. More important, though, is making the baddies somehow, weirdly, understood. -- Mark Strong
The most likely explanation is the most practical. 'Macbeth' is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of 'Macbeth'. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting. -- Ian Mckellen
Macbeth was the first play I ever read. -- Alan Cumming
Everybody needs a career manager.- Lady Macbeth -- Robert Asprin
I drink to the general joy o' the whole table." Macbeth -- William Shakespeare
A great performance like Lady Macbeth may be forgotten. Writing endures. -- Susan Strasberg
The multiplying villainies of nature do swarm upon him... [from Macbeth] -- Alan Moore
Had he not resembled My father as he slept I had done't! Macbeth -- William Shakespeare
Shakespeare without Othello, Lear, Macbeth and Hamlet would be all too much like Hamlet without the prince. -- Brand Blanshard
A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn't interest me. -- Alan Cumming
I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary." -- Ken Kesey
At 18 I began painting steadily fulltime and at age 20 had my first New York show at the Macbeth Gallery. -- Andrew Wyeth
Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? - Lady Macbeth -- William Shakespeare
I want to play Eva Peron. I've already done a lot of Shakespeare, but I'd like to do Lady Macbeth. -- Tamara Tunie
Macbeth:If we should fail?Lady Macbeth:We fail?But screw your courage to the sticking place,And we'll not fail. -- William Shakespeare
Maybe because Im a nice and sweet person in life, I like the darker roles. The really dark one is Lady Macbeth. -- Anna Netrebko
How now! Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Lady Macbeth -- William Shakespeare
I always assumed I would leave drama school and do 'Lady Macbeth' and all sorts of serious things. It just didn't happen. -- Olivia Colman
In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness - inspissated gloom. -- Samuel Johnson
I'm either the witch or Lady Macbeth of English politics, but someone gotta wear the pants in England when others wearing kilts -- Margaret Thatcher
It's in Macbeth: "The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon." I seldom have occasion to pull it out, but it's ready and waiting! -- Margaret Atwood
[Macbeth] is historically set in a place depicted by Shakespeare as brutal and violent, incredibly superstitious, and that's something that I do believe is Scottish. -- James McAvoy
Unsex me here and fill me from crown to toe full of direst cruelty That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose. Macbeth -- William Shakespeare
Both Plockton and the Isle of Muck in north-west Scotland are incredibly beautiful. Sadly, Plockton has been discovered by tourists because it's where they shot Hamish Macbeth. -- Arabella Weir
I can always do theater; I can do Ibsen, I can do Macbeth, I can do Chekhov, I can do Moliere, Othello, I can do Richard III. -- Ving Rhames
Macbeth to Witches: What are these So wither'd and so wild in their attire, That look not like th' inhabitants o' th' earth, And yet are on 't? -- William Shakespeare
I read Macbeth as a secondary student in Nigeria and it was like an African play to me. It had all the right elements - witches, kings and assassinations. -- Sefi Atta
Had Shakespeare listened to the news of Duncans death in a tavern or heard the knocking on his own bedroom door after he had finished the writing of Macbeth? -- Graham Greene
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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
Many actors want to play Hamlet and Macbeth. Ever since I became an actor, from the very beginning I just wanted to play a Shetland pony. I cannot explain why -- Dustin Hoffman
Steve's sales pitch on the NeXT operating system was dazzling," according to Amelio. " He praised the virtues and strengths as though he were describing a performance of Oliver as Macbeth. -- Walter Isaacson
At the word witch, we imagine the horrible old crones from Macbeth. But the cruel trials witches suffered teach us the opposite. Many perished precisely because they were young and beautiful. -- Andre Breton
After making my stage debut aged nine as Macduff's small son in 'Macbeth,' I had played a number of parts, from 'Twelfth Night's Viola to 'The Merchant Of Venice's Portia'. -- Felicity Kendal
I felt like I was hobbling, like one oof the old crones from Act I of Macbeth - God knows my hair felt scraggy enough that I must have looked the part. -- P. C. Cast
If you're a woman doing classic theater, the big roles are often destroyers. I've played Hedda Gabler, Lady Macbeth, some of the Chekhovian heroines, Electra, Phaedra - they're all powerful women, but they're forces of negativity. -- Eve Best
My wide eyes make me look much younger without make-up, and although it's fun to have a line in innocence corrupted, I doubt I'll get to play the vampy vixen or a Hedda Gabler or Lady Macbeth. -- Talulah Riley
My wide eyes make me look much younger without make-up, and although it's fun to have a line in innocence corrupted, I doubt I'll get to play the vampy vixen or a Hedda Gabler or Lady Macbeth." -- Talulah Riley
Sometimes I want to have a mental book burning that would scour my mind clean of all the filthy visions literature has conjured there. But how to do without 'The Illiad?' How to do without 'Macbeth? -- Geraldine Brooks
The picture of me is nearly finished, and I think it is magnificent. The green and blue of the dress is splendid, and the expression as Lady Macbeth holds the crown over her head is quite wonderful. -- Ellen Terry
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time;And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death.- Macbeth Act V, Scene V -- William Shakespeare
Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology. -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Macbeth' was the first play I ever read. In fact, I remember my brother Tom, who is six years older than me, coming home from school and telling me about it. He was the one that really got me going. -- Alan Cumming
The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep. -- Mary McCarthy
For me, what Macbeth is about is people who cannot face their fears and pain and instead of facing them and going beyond, they just run away and they try to cover this with power and violence, but it doesn't work. -- Marion Cotillard
In the power and splendor of the universe, inspiration waits for the millions to come. Man has only to strive for it. Poems greater than the Iliad, plays greater than Macbeth, stories more engaging than Don Quixote await their seeker and finder. -- John Masefield
I started to itch to do a play again and 'Macbeth' came to the surface in my mind. I never thought I would do it in a conventional way. A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn't interest me. -- Alan Cumming
I see Macbeth as a young, open-faced warrior, who is gradually sucked into a whirpool of events because of his ambition. When he meets the weird sisters and hears their prophecy, he's like the man who hopes to win a million - a gamble for high stakes. -- Roman Polanski
Macbeth's deed is done in horror, and without the faintest desire or sense of glory- done, one may almost say, as if it were an appalling duty; the instant it is finished, its futility is revealed to Macbeth as clearly as its vileness had been revealed beforehand -- A. C. Bradley
Historically, Macbeth is one of the greatest kings Scotland ever had. He was on the throne for 19 years, and he simply has this dreadful reputation because Shakespeare manipulated history for the benefit of James I, who was paying him to write the play to blacken Macbeth's name. -- David Hewson
Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep, - the innocent sleep; Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast. -- William Shakespeare
I had great English teachers in high school who first piqued my interest in Shakespeare. Each year, we read a different play - 'Othello,' 'Julius Caesar,' 'Macbeth,' 'Hamlet' - and I was the nerd in class who would memorize soliloquies just for the fun of it. -- Ian Doescher
Shakespeare, who never could think up a plot by himself, found this one [Macbeth] in Holinshed's Chronicles, changing it just enough so that no one would recognize the source. He didn't count on the resourcefulness of modern scholars, who have to discover things like this to become associate professors. -- Richard Armour
I want to do all kinds of things. I want to do some comedy. I'd love to do a romantic comedy, and I'd love to do some period pieces with classical text. I'd love somebody to cast me as Macbeth, but for a film. I just want to be all over the place. -- Kevin Alejandro
When I was 16, I played Macbeth at school and my English teacher said, 'I think you may have acting talent. Try to get into the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and see where you get.' I wouldn't have thought of that at all. I wanted to be a surgeon, but I wasn't a clever man. -- David Suchet
Macbeth' is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie - such as some of the special effects and bits of film - to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience. -- Dario Argento
I was at a school in England, a prep school, from the ages of 8 and 13. And every play they did was a musical. Parents love musicals. And I don't sing. It was driving me crazy. 'We're doing 'Macbeth.' 'Yes!' 'The musical!' And I was always in the chorus, because of course, in all the main parts, you had to be able to sing. -- Charlie Cox
I'm just having a wonderful time. It's an interesting thing that I'm very comfortable with this material and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I did MacBeth. -- F. Murray Abraham

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