What do you think?
Rate this book
354 pages, Hardcover
First published April 11, 2017
“Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?”
The question is so unlikely, so nonsensical coming from such a sensible man, that I can’t suppress a smile. “I blame him for all of it,” I say.
“But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.”
Actors are by nature volatile—alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster.
You can justify anything, if you do it poetically enough.
We cracked up. But we didn't really shatter until we came back together again.
“But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.”
“We felt all the passions of the characters we played as if they were our own. But a character’s emotions don’t cancel out the actor’s – instead you feel both at once.”
“Instead he was handsome the way you think of the devil as handsome – forbiddingly so.”
“Actors are by nature volatile—alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster.”
“But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart – by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.”
“The real sky was enormous overhead, making our mirrors and twinkling stage lights seem ridiculous- Man’s futile attempt to imitate God”
“Which of us could say we were more sinned against than sinning? We were so easily manipulated - confusion made a masterpiece of us.”
"Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?"
"I blame him for all of it."
“The sky was clear and quiet, stars peering curiously down at us from a wide dome of indigo. The water, too, was still, and I thought, what liars they are, the sky and the water. Still and calm and clear, like everything was fine. It wasn’t fine, and really, it never would be again.”
“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”
“Nothing mattered much after that morning. Our two souls—if not all six—were forfeit.”
“My infatuation […] transcended any notion of gender.”
“How tremendous the agony of unmade decisions.”
“It’s easier now to be Romeo, or Macbeth, or Brutus, or Edmund. Someone else.”