The raven himself is hoarse

Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law

I left no ring with her; what means this lady?

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

How happy some o'er other some can be!

All the world's a stage,

Nothing will induce me to part with Bunbury, and if you ever get married, which seems to me extremely problematic, you will be very glad to know Bunbury.

I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papa's doll-child. And the children, in their turn, have been my dolls.

But I do think it is their husbands' faults

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,

It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

If we shadows have offended,

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?

And even for that do I love you the more.

Thus do I ever make my fool my purse;

My father had a daughter loved a man,

Mad world! mad kings! mad composition!

This first, of gold, who this inscription bears,

Here's neither bush nor shrub, to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing; I hear it sing i' the wind: yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it.

But I keep myself in hand, as the saying is, and always dress and have my hair done comme il faut. Do I ever permit myself to go out even into the garden in a dressing-gown, or without my hair being done?

We live, as I hope you know, Mr. Worthing, in an age of ideals. The fact is constantly mentioned in the more expensive monthly magazines, and has reached the provincial pulpits, I am told.

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

Now is the winter of our discontent

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,

Ah, Faustus,

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!

Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have

This day is called the feast of Crispian:

Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No.

What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

Since what I am to say must be but that

I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else. I wish you'd left me where you found me.

You promised me my life; but you lied. You think that life is nothing but not being stone dead. It is not the bread and water I fear: I can live on bread.

What can we do? We must go on living! We shall go on living, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings.

I don't object to cutting wood from necessity, but why destroy the forests? The Russian forests are trembling under the blows of the axe. Millions of trees have perished.

I bought it! The cherry orchard is mine now — mine! Good God, the cherry orchard is mine! Tell me I'm drunk, out of my mind, that I'm imagining it all.

I might have known she needed help! I know how things can be — for women. I tell you, it's queer, Mrs. Peters. We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things — it's all just a different kind of the same thing.

Day and night I am held in the grip of one thought: I must be writing, I must be writing, I must. Here I am talking to you, I'm excited — and not for one second do I forget that there's an unfinished story waiting for me on my desk.

It is perfectly true, Torvald. When I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls. And when I came to live with you—

What can we do? We must live our lives. Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old;

Ah no! young blade! That was a trifle short! You might have said at least a hundred things by varying the tone. Aggressive: 'Sir, if I had such a nose I'd amputate it!' Friendly: 'When you sup it must annoy you, dipping in your cup; you need a drinking-bowl of special shape!'

Why do you say that you have kissed the ground I walked on? You should kill me rather. I am so tired. If I could only rest—rest. I am a sea-gull—no—no, I am an actress.

Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow, a herb most bruised is woman. We must pay our store of gold, hoarded for that one day, to buy us some man's love; and lo, they bring a master of our flesh! There comes the sting of the whole shame.

Yea, for these laws were not ordained of Zeus, and she who sits enthroned with gods below, Justice, enacted not these human laws. Nor did I deem that thou, a mortal man, could'st by a breath annul and override the immutable unwritten laws of Heaven. They were not born today nor yesterday; they die not; and none knoweth whence they sprang.

You silly boy! Of course. Why, we have been engaged for the last three months. Yes, it will be exactly three months on Thursday.

Now I am burning your child, Thea!—Burning it, curly-locks! Your child and Eilert Lovborg's.

Aha! That's done you, Henry Higgins, it has. Now I don't care that for your bullying and your big talk.

Ah! If you'd seen him, as I saw him first, you would have loved him just as much as I. He came to church each day, with contrite mien, kneeled, on both knees, right opposite my place, and drew the eyes of all the congregation, to watch the fervour of his prayers to heaven; with deep-drawn sighs and great ejaculations, he humbly kissed the earth at every moment; and when I left the church, he ran before me to give me holy water at the door.

Welcome to your city, huh? Hail, hail, de gang's all here! Say, yuh're some hard-lookin' guy, ain't yuh? I seen lots of tough nuts dat de gang called gorillas, but yuh're de foist real one I ever seen. Some chest yuh got, and shoulders, and dem arms and mits! I bet yuh got a punch in eider fist dat'd knock 'em all silly! Sure, I get yuh.

I s'pose if I tried to tell you I wasn't — that — no more you'd believe me, wouldn't you? Yes, you would! And if I told you that yust getting out in this barge, and being on the sea had changed me and made me feel different about things,'s if all I'd been through wasn't me and didn't count and was yust like it never happened — you'd laugh, wouldn't you?

Ay tank, after your mo'der die, ven Ay vas avay on voyage, it's better for you you don't never see me! Ay don't know, Anna, vhy Ay never come home Sveden in ole year. Ay vant come home end of every voyage. Ay vant see your mo'der, your two bro'der before dey vas drowned, you ven you vas born — but — Ay — don't go.

I can't do it, God help me, and your two eyes looking at me. Though I do be thinking I'd have a good right to smash your skull like a rotten egg.

Those were the only happy moments of my life then, dreaming there at the window. I liked to be all alone — those times. I got to know all the different kinds of sunsets by heart. And all those sunsets took place over there — beyond the horizon.

What do you think — living with a man like you — having to suffer all the time because you've never been man enough to work and do things like other people. But no! You never own up to that. You think you're so much better than other folks, with your college education, where you never learned a thing, and always reading your stupid books instead of working. I s'pose you think I ought to be proud to be your wife — a poor, ignorant thing like me!

And why can't a crook at times speak the truth — since honest people at times speak like crooks? Yes — I've forgotten a lot — but I still know a thing or two! The old man? Oh — he's wise!

Exactly! Thieves creeping in! I took my gun — I went out. I looked and saw two of them opening a window — and so busy that they didn't even see me.

My one and only love," he says, "my parents," he says, "refuse to give their consent to our wedding — and threaten to disown me because of my love for you. Therefore," he says, "I must take my life.

In search of a town — to be cured — And you, Ophelia, must go away! Take the veil! Just imagine — there's a hospital to cure — ah — organisms for drunkards — a wonderful hospital — built of marble — with marble floors … light — clean — food — and all gratis!

I told you — I'm through with being a thief, so help me God! I'll quit! If I say so, I'll do it!

Quite unscrupulous. The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. To women he is half vivisector, half vampire.

It was that dreadful book of yours. You know how timid mother is.

Oh, if only I thought I had a chance!

For goodness' sake, don't call him Jack under my roof . Now, Octavius, I know that my dead friend was right when he said you were a generous lad. I know that this man was your schoolfellow, and that you feel bound to stand by him because there was a boyish friendship between you. But I ask you to consider the altered circumstances.

Half a hundred beyond. Ten there. A score that's above. Eighty jugs. Six cups and a broken one.

There was not, but a story filled half a page of the hanging of a man.

I've nice jobs you could be doing, gathering shells to make a whitewash for our hut within, building up a little goose-house, or stretching a new skin on an old curragh I have, and if my hut is far from all sides, it's there you'll meet the wisest old men, I tell you, at the corner of my wheel, and it's there yourself and me will have great times whispering and hugging…

It's little the like of him knows of the sea… .

Why wouldn't you give him your blessing and he looking round in the door?

A woman reconstructs the prize debate speeches of her youth — and everything the Constitution failed to protect.

A movie-theatre cleaner finally says the thing he can't — about Rose, about being passed over, about staying still.

The team's brash striker runs her mouth through warm-ups — swagger stretched thin over adolescent fear.

An unemployed trucker talks to a stranger about loneliness and his estranged wife — the play's raw direct-address opening.

A newly-promoted factory worker defends the management job that's costing her the friends she made on the line.

The pragmatic owner of a Congo bar-brothel defends the hard bargain she strikes to keep her women alive.

Fifteen years after walking out, Nora returns and argues that marriage itself is the trap.

A Scranton father finally admits the failure and fear he carried into his daughter's cramped New York apartment.

A recovering addict who moderates an online support forum reckons with the daughter she lost and the family she's rebuilding.

A veteran auto-plant worker and union rep faces the closing of the last stamping plant — and her own hidden precarity.

An inner-city teacher fears for her own son, sent to a private school and now in trouble — the school-to-prison pipeline made personal.

The eldest sibling fights for the memory of her dead father as the family clears out an estate full of ugly secrets.

A magazine editorial assistant skewers office ambition — right before an ordinary day turns catastrophic.

A grieving widow running a church puppet ministry comes apart at the seams of propriety.

A Pakistani-American lawyer who shed his faith to assimilate finally says the dangerous thing out loud at a dinner party.

A retired NYC cop and widower refuses to settle his lawsuit against the department, holding his rent-controlled ground.

A former captive turned rebel soldier makes the case for the gun as the only power a woman gets in the Liberian war.

A young Black man on a street corner dreams aloud of the promised land beyond the block he can't leave — Godot meets Exodus.

A combative young conservative intellectual defends her worldview into the small hours at a Catholic reunion in Wyoming.

In the charged finale, a Black woman names exactly what she needs her white partner to understand about desire, power, and history. (Mature themes.)

The 'mad prophet of the airwaves' orders America to throw open its windows and scream that it's mad as hell.

A therapist tells a brilliant, guarded young man that his book-smarts are worthless next to a life actually lived.

On the stand, a Marine colonel dares a young lawyer to face the brutal cost of the freedom he sleeps under.

A hit man recites Ezekiel 25:17 as ritual — and, by the end, actually starts to mean it.

Alone at the mirror, a lonely cabbie rehearses the confrontation — and the identity — he wishes he had.

A magazine editor witheringly explains that even her assistant's 'I don't care about fashion' sweater was chosen for her by this room.

A conservatory instructor justifies his abuse as the only thing that forges greatness — 'no two words more harmful than good job.'

Jo rages that women are minds and souls as well as hearts — and admits how lonely she is inside her independence.

A blunt legal assistant fires back at condescending lawyers with the exact case facts they underestimated her to know.

Elle turns being underestimated into a weapon, arguing her case — and her worth — with relentless, precise cheer.

An oilman confesses his hatred of people and his need to be far from everyone — competition as the only relationship he has.

In her lawyer's office, Nicole lays out how she disappeared inside her marriage, one small surrender at a time.

A hotshot closer humiliates a room of failing salesmen — 'coffee's for closers' — turning cruelty into motivation. (Strong language.)

A sports agent writes the mission statement that gets him fired — fewer clients, more heart — and reads his idealism back to himself.

From his cell, Lecter dissects a young agent's accent, ambitions, and wounds with terrifying, courtly precision.

A cornered bank robber works the street crowd, chanting 'Attica!' — turning a botched heist into desperate theatre.

A corrupt detective dares a whole neighborhood — and his rookie — to stop him, declaring he owns these streets. (Strong language.)

A Black maid in 1960s Mississippi quietly tells the white child she raises that she is kind, smart, and important.

In posthumous voiceover, a suburban father looks back on the stupid, beautiful smallness of his life with sudden gratitude.

A restless Sacramento teenager insists on the name she gave herself and the bigger life she's sure waits elsewhere.

In the Kodak Carousel pitch, an ad man sells nostalgia so beautifully he breaks his own heart doing it.

A dying chemistry teacher drops the meek act and tells his wife exactly who is in danger — 'I am the one who knocks.'

Breaking the fourth wall, a sharp, self-sabotaging woman admits she just wants someone to tell her how to live. (Mature themes.)

A media titan tells his circling children the brutal truth: they are not serious people. (Strong language.)

On trial for a murder he didn't commit, Tyrion stops defending himself and indicts the city that always despised him.

A mob boss tells his psychiatrist he fears he came in at the end — that the best is over and he's just managing decline.

Alone in the National Cathedral, a grieving president rails at God over a friend's death and the office's cost.

A Washington crisis-fixer lays out the play, fast and total, taking command of a room that's losing its nerve.

At the dartboard, an underestimated coach reveals he clocked everyone who wrote him off — 'be curious, not judgmental.'

A teenager in the grip of addiction narrates the pull of the high and the wreckage around it with unnerving candor. (Mature themes.)

Newly abandoned, a housewife grabs the mic and turns her own humiliation into a fearless stand-up set. (Strong language.)

A charming assassin describes her wants with childlike, chilling frankness — without conscience, and delighted about it.

A fiercely ambitious surgeon refuses to apologize for wanting the career more than the romance.

In a bar-association hearing, Jimmy weaponizes his own brother's memory to win reinstatement — a con man's masterpiece of sincerity.

A newspaper columnist turns her own romantic disaster into a wry question about love, the city, and settling.

A monarch defends the discipline of duty — and the self she's buried under the Crown — to those who want her to just be human.

A brilliant, misanthropic diagnostician defends his cruelty as honesty — 'everybody lies' — while dodging his own.

A bipolar CIA officer races to make everyone see the threat only she can see — brilliant, right, and coming apart.

On the stand, a stick-up man who robs drug dealers coolly explains his code to a lawyer who thinks he's better.

In the interview room, a burned-out detective delivers his bleak philosophy of time, self, and consciousness as 'a tragic misstep.'