“Living is strife and torment, disappointment and love and sacrifice, g...” — Laurence Olivier Quote

“Living is strife and torment, disappointment and love and sacrifice, golden sunsets and black storms. I said that some time ago, and today I do not think I would add one word.”

“Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it.”

“I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare. An actor must act.”

“Have a very good reason for everything you do.”

“'Richard III' is a really difficult play to film - it's involved, often obscure. I felt it absolutely necessary to do more simplification than I've ever done before.”

“Nobody is going to pretend that I am younger than I am. Apart from anything else, it is in the papers all the damn time - every time I have a birthday.”

“I can see,’ Miss Emily said, ‘that it might look as though you were simply pawns in a game. It can certainly be looked at like that. But think of it. You were lucky pawns. There was a certain climate and now it’s gone. You have to accept that sometimes that’s how things happen in the world. People’s opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grew up at a certain point in this process.’”

“Time has to pass. But sometimes its so goddamn long. Sometimes it just seems to drag and drag and weigh a ton. And hang on you like a monkey. Like its going to suck the blood out of you. Or squeeze your guts out. And sometimes it flies. And is gone somewhere, somehow, before you know it was even here. As if time is only here to make you miserable. That's the only reason for time. To squeeze you. Crush you. To tie you up in knots and make you fucking miserable.”

“It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, music, the physics of falling leaves, vanilla and jasmine, poppies, smiling, anthills, the color of the sky, coffee and cashmere, literature, sparks and subway trains... If only one could leave this life slowly!”

“They would grow old together measuring time by the life spans of a succession of speckled bird dogs.”