At least we can still count on self-interest as a predictable factor…I suppose it’s the last to go.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.14

They are two sides of the same coin, or, let us say, being as there are so many of us, the same side of two coins.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.23

We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.28

”Blood is compulsory – they’re all blood, you see.”
”Is that what people want?”
”It’s what we do.”
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.33

”I remember when there were no questions.”
”There were always questions. To exchange one set for another is no great matter.”
”Answers, yes. There were answers to everything.”
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. p.38

All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grostesque.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.39

Forget everything but today. Live and laugh and wait for the hour of hurt to cry out.
Carcajou Ch.XI p.193

The only beginning is birth and the only end is death – if you can’t count on that, what can you count on?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.39

”Where’s it going to end.”
”That’s the question.”
”It’s all questions.”
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.44

Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are…condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one – that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it’ll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we’d know that we are lost.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.60

We’re actors – we’re the opposite of people!
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dad p.63

Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It’s the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn’t make any difference so long as it is honored.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.67

Life in a box is better than no life at all. I expect. You’d have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking – well, at least I’m not dead!
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.71

Death followed by eternity…the worst of both worlds. It is a terrible thought.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.72

[On Death] it’s just a man failing to reappear, that’s all – now you see him, now you don’t, that’s the only thing that’s real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back – an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.84

”You’re a mass of prejudice.”
”I’ve been taken in before.”
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.85

Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.108

A compulsion toward philosophical introspection is his [Hamlet’s] chief characteristic, if I may put it like that. It does not mean he is mad. It does not mean it isn’t. Very often, it does not mean anything at all. Which may or may not be a kind of madness.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are dead p.116

We’ve traveled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.121

light goes with life, and in the winter of your years the dark comes early.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.124

Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over…Death is not anything…death is not…It’s the absence of presence, nothing more…the endless time of never coming back…a gap you can’t see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound…
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.124

There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said – no. But somehow we missed it.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead p.125

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