MindProbe

“You may recall – perhaps you’ve experienced this in the theatre – the bewilderingly oblique way Shakespeare tends to begin his plays, via marginal characters whom we struggle to place as they recount or anticipate some major narrative event in a conversation that begins in the middle, leaving us flailing (beginning Shakespeare’s plays at their beginning is not always the easiest place to start). Not so in Richard III. The opening stage direction in the first printed edition is ‘Enter Richard, Duke of Gloucester, solus’ – meaning alone – making it absolutely clear that not only does he open the play, he does so, uniquely, in soliloquy. He begins, that’s to say, by addressing the audience. From the outset, we are his creatures.”
― Emma Smith, This Is Shakespeare

“Surely even the most malignant ghost is a lonely thing, left out in the dark, desperate to be heard.”
― Stephen King, The Shining

“In Superman, some of the loftiest aspirations of our species came hurtling down from imagination's bright heaven to collide with the lowest form of entertainment, and from their union something powerful and resonant was born, albeit in its underwear.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human

“Shakespeare is complex, like living, not technically and crackably difficult, like crosswords or changing the time on the cooker”
― Emma Smith, This Is Shakespeare