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Shadowplay Quotes
Shadowplay
by
Joseph O'Connor3,838 ratings, 3.86 average rating, 596 reviews
Shadowplay Quotes
Showing 1-15 of 15
“Most things between a woman and a man cannot be understood, it's why people invented love poems, a way of filling in the silence.”
― Shadowplay
― Shadowplay
“Confronting authority, one has only two choices: Surrender, or try to confuse it.”
― Shadowplay
― Shadowplay
“...everyone has a Mr. Hyde, another version of the self. A direction not taken, perhaps. A road we didn't know existed, or had no name for, We each of us carry our choices about, don't we...? And every choice is a rejection, when you think.
But there is, too, a kind of shadowland where the Other always lives. Or at least, never dies. Just goes on. Hard to stumble into happiness if you don't leave your shadowland behind....Theatre people don't, as a rule. Goes with the job. Everything is so precarious, almost all of the time. Makes it hard to settle. One gets fidgety. And when you're someone else, every night, and twice on a Saturday, you can forget what it's like being you.
I always felt, you know, two hands are needed here. One to wave farewell, the other to close the heart....[E]asier said than done. I don't know that anyone succeeds.
Questionings. Dawn-thoughts. Mind ticking like a watch. Four in the morning but you're staring out a window. What if I had married that other person? Or remained unmarried? What if I had accepted that job, or emigrated or stayed, or lived my life in a different way, a way that was truer to me, perhaps, but I was afraid of what people might think or say?
You see, part of you DID do those things. To imagine is to do.
And there are moments when you feel a murderous envy of that part. The self that escaped. The self that chose freedom.
So, out comes the rage. But already too late.
It's the only thing one's learned. We're in shadowland.
[Ellen Terry]”
― Shadowplay
But there is, too, a kind of shadowland where the Other always lives. Or at least, never dies. Just goes on. Hard to stumble into happiness if you don't leave your shadowland behind....Theatre people don't, as a rule. Goes with the job. Everything is so precarious, almost all of the time. Makes it hard to settle. One gets fidgety. And when you're someone else, every night, and twice on a Saturday, you can forget what it's like being you.
I always felt, you know, two hands are needed here. One to wave farewell, the other to close the heart....[E]asier said than done. I don't know that anyone succeeds.
Questionings. Dawn-thoughts. Mind ticking like a watch. Four in the morning but you're staring out a window. What if I had married that other person? Or remained unmarried? What if I had accepted that job, or emigrated or stayed, or lived my life in a different way, a way that was truer to me, perhaps, but I was afraid of what people might think or say?
You see, part of you DID do those things. To imagine is to do.
And there are moments when you feel a murderous envy of that part. The self that escaped. The self that chose freedom.
So, out comes the rage. But already too late.
It's the only thing one's learned. We're in shadowland.
[Ellen Terry]”
― Shadowplay
“It was simply the way with Harry, like waiting for sunrise. But once you made clear that you wouldn't be going to bed with him, he'd look oddly relieved and calm down. And the matter once raised would not be revisited, I will say that for him. He didn't make a nuisance of himself. Funny old skellum. Never dull. There are men whom it is important not to take the slightest notice of when they're talking, if it's after ten o'clock at night and they've had a glass of beer. Harry was one such mammal.
They really and truly don't mean to be idiots. But it's like a Roman Catholic person not wanting to feel guilt. Might as well ask water to run uphill. Except that might conceivably be contrived. With a pump.
Once, he asked my sister to run away with him, to Rotterdam I think it was. She said no and he asked my brother. That was the most important thing to understand about Harry. Essentially, what he wanted--darling, who wouldn't--was someone to run away with him to Rotterdam.
It's what all of us want, isn't it? Of course, nobody gets it. Probably not even those misfortunates who are in Rotterdam already. One wonders where they want to run away to. Crouch End?”
― Shadowplay
They really and truly don't mean to be idiots. But it's like a Roman Catholic person not wanting to feel guilt. Might as well ask water to run uphill. Except that might conceivably be contrived. With a pump.
Once, he asked my sister to run away with him, to Rotterdam I think it was. She said no and he asked my brother. That was the most important thing to understand about Harry. Essentially, what he wanted--darling, who wouldn't--was someone to run away with him to Rotterdam.
It's what all of us want, isn't it? Of course, nobody gets it. Probably not even those misfortunates who are in Rotterdam already. One wonders where they want to run away to. Crouch End?”
― Shadowplay
“When we are young we do not think that time is a currency. Then we notice the account running low.”
― Shadowplay
― Shadowplay
“Is there a monster in it, Papa?'
'Wouldn't be much of a story if there weren't.'
Oh spiff, I like a monster story. Is he outstandingly horrid? A spear of longing pierces the father as he strokes his son's hair.
'He's horrid in his way. But then other times, he's sorrowful and just wants to go to sleep.'
The boy chuckles. 'I never want that.'
'But this feller's been awake a thousand years. He's bushed.'
'I don't see why that should make him sad.'
'That is why we have stories, Nolly. So we can know what it's like to be someone else.”
"Why would we want that?"
"Because sometimes it's beastly tiring being us.”
― Shadowplay
'Wouldn't be much of a story if there weren't.'
Oh spiff, I like a monster story. Is he outstandingly horrid? A spear of longing pierces the father as he strokes his son's hair.
'He's horrid in his way. But then other times, he's sorrowful and just wants to go to sleep.'
The boy chuckles. 'I never want that.'
'But this feller's been awake a thousand years. He's bushed.'
'I don't see why that should make him sad.'
'That is why we have stories, Nolly. So we can know what it's like to be someone else.”
"Why would we want that?"
"Because sometimes it's beastly tiring being us.”
― Shadowplay
“Is there a monster in it, Papa?'
'Wouldn't be much of a story if there weren't.'
Oh spiff, I like a monster story. Is he outstandingly horrid? A spear of longing pierces the father as he strokes his son's hair.
'He's horrid in his way. But then other times, he's sorrowful and just wants to go to sleep.'
The boy chuckles. 'I never want that.'
'But this feller's been awake a thousand years. He's bushed.'
'I don't see why that should make him sad.'
'That is why we have stories, Nolly. So we can know what it's like to be someone else.”
― Shadowplay
'Wouldn't be much of a story if there weren't.'
Oh spiff, I like a monster story. Is he outstandingly horrid? A spear of longing pierces the father as he strokes his son's hair.
'He's horrid in his way. But then other times, he's sorrowful and just wants to go to sleep.'
The boy chuckles. 'I never want that.'
'But this feller's been awake a thousand years. He's bushed.'
'I don't see why that should make him sad.'
'That is why we have stories, Nolly. So we can know what it's like to be someone else.”
― Shadowplay
“Man's doom is that he can never sit easy where Fate has placed him”
― Shadowplay
― Shadowplay
“No one cares where you came from. You write your own story. But he wonders if that can be true.”
― Shadowplay
― Shadowplay
“It is important to remain afloat, eyes on the horizon, always. The past is a drowning madman; throw him a rope, he'll pull you in.
[Bram Stoker]”
― Shadowplay
[Bram Stoker]”
― Shadowplay
“...when God made time He made a ruddy great lot of it, and, when He made people, His artistry was not limited to This Sort and None Other, that Love is not a matter of who puts what where but of wanting only goodness and respectful kindliness for the loved one. There is no sort of love that can never find its home. Life has its cruelties but it is not as cruel as that.
[Bram Stoker]”
― Shadowplay
[Bram Stoker]”
― Shadowplay
“All the evil in the world, it comes from shattered love.
[Ellen Terry, to Bram Stoker]”
― Shadowplay
[Ellen Terry, to Bram Stoker]”
― Shadowplay
“You write for the winds, uncorrupted by hope and untouched by hope's sibling, despair.
[Bram Stoker, to Walt Whitman]”
― Shadowplay
[Bram Stoker, to Walt Whitman]”
― Shadowplay
“The belief that wickedness is the province of monsters, not men, is consoling to those who are young.
[Bram Stoker]”
― Shadowplay
[Bram Stoker]”
― Shadowplay
“A bloodstained, scarlet sky, streaked with finger-smears of black and handfuls of hard-flung gold. Then a watery dawn rises out of the marshlands, pale blues and greys and muddied-down greens, like daybreak in a virgin's watercolour.”
― Shadowplay
― Shadowplay
