“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” quotes
(1990)
Title Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Original title Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Year 1990
Director Tom Stoppard
Genre Drama, Comedy
Original title Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Year 1990
Director Tom Stoppard
Genre Drama, Comedy
Plot – While the sad prince of Denmark tries to climb the walls of Elsinore's castle, two bizarre fellows wander nearby. They are busy in some dialectical exercises. When the comedy's director arrives to set up the play written by Hamlet, both the fellows end up losing their lives.
All actors – Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Richard Dreyfuss, Livio Badurina, Tomislav Maretic, Mare Mlacnik, Serge Soric, Mladen Vasary, Zeljko Vukmirica, Branko Zavrsan, Joanna Roth, Iain Glen
show all“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” Quotes 24 quotes
“There must have been a moment at the beginning, where we could have said no. Somehow we missed it. Well, we'll know better next time.”
“- Guildenstern: I don't believe in it anyway.
- Rosencrantz: What?
- Guildenstern: England.
- Rosencrantz: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?”“- Rosencrantz: Did you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it?
- Guildenstern: No.
- Rosencrantz: Nor do I, really. It's silly to be depressed by it.”“Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occured to you that you don't go on forever. Must have been shattering. Stamped into one's memory.”
“- Guildenstern: Wasn't that the end?
- The Player: You call that an ending? - with practically everyone still on his feet? My goodness, no - over your dead body!”“- Rosencrantz: Shouldn't we be doing something... constructive?
- Guildenstern: What did you have in mind? A short, blunt human pyramid?”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'.
“All your life you live so close to truth it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it's like being ambushed by a grotesque.”
“- Rosencrantz: What are you playing at?
- Guildenstern: Words. Words. They're all we have to go on.”“Let me get it straight. Your father was king. You were his only son. Your father dies. You are of age. Your uncle becomes king.”
“If this is our destiny, then that was his, and if there are no explanations for us, let there be none for him.”
“We are tragedians, you see? We follow directions. There is no choice involved. The bad end unhappily, the good, unluckily. That is what tragedy means.”
“You would think this would fall faster than this. And you would be absolutely right.”
“Audiences know what they expect and that is all they are prepared to believe in.”
“We're actors! We're the opposite of people!”
“- Guildenstern: I think I have it. A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.
- Rosencrantz: Or just as mad.”“Pragmatism. Is that all you have to offer?”
“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.”
Highlights
