It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine is a sad one.

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.

Nothing can come of nothing.

Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me.

I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

I bear a charmed life.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

Shakespeare – I was very influenced – still am – by Shakespeare. I couldn’t believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.

Now is the winter of our discontent.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

I must have read every issue of ‚Punch‘ published in the 20th century, and I think in the process I picked up the true voice of English humour – that amiable, fairly liberal, laconic voice which you find in something like ‚Three Men in a Boat.‘

Brevity is the soul of wit.

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

I am Warhol. I am the No. 1 most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare in the flesh.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

I don’t do Shakespeare. I don’t talk in that kind of broken English.

I’ve got no need to prove to myself that I can do Shakespeare. I’ve done it.

I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch, which hurts and is desired.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

Love is too young to know what conscience is.

O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

This above all; to thine own self be true.

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

The course of true love never did run smooth.

‚Tis better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.

I don’t like allegories.

Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

I’m not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

In the theatre, people talk. Talk, talk until the cows come home about journeys of discovery and about what Hazlitt thought of a line of Shakespeare. I can’t stand it.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense… I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

Well, if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench for this gear.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.

Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better.

People ask me if there are going to be stories of Harry Potter as an adult. Frankly, if I wanted to, I could keep writing stories until Harry is a senior citizen, but I don’t know how many people would actually want to read about a 65 year old Harry still at Hogwarts playing bingo with Ron and Hermione.