Stratford Quotes

Rome's just a city like anywhere else. A vastly overrated city, I'd say. It trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare. ~ Anthony Burgess

But in reading Shakespeare and in reading about Edward de Vere, it's quite apparent that when you read these works that whoever penned this body of work was firstly well-travelled, secondly a multi-linguist and thirdly someone who had an innate knowledge of the inner workings and the mechanisms of a very secret and paranoid Elizabethan court. Edward de Vere ticks those three boxes and many more. William of Stratford gave his wife a bed when he died [his second best bed]. ~ Rhys Ifans

I started singing about three years ago, I entered a local singing competition called Stratford Idol. The other people in the competition had been taking singing lessons and had vocal coaches. I wasn't taking it too seriously at the time, I would just sing around the house. I was only 12 and I got second place. ~ Justin Bieber

And it is a very beautiful idea, and possibly true, that a common man from Stratford with a common education was able to write these plays. ~ Mark Rylance

In the work of the greatest geniuses, humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere, but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare ... I am not concerned with who wrote the works of Shakespeare ... but I can hardly think it was the Stratford boy. Whoever wrote them had an aristocratic attitude. ~ Charlie Chaplin

When I was at Stratford, the very first thing that I was commissioned to work on was trying to make a musical out of the documentary material about the General Strike, which was the next big historical event in England, after the First World War. ~ Trevor Nunn

The thing that I had saved up for myself and wanted most to bring off was a fully fledged professional production of Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford. ~ Trevor Nunn

Maisie was next, and stepped up to vote. She wondered how many hands had trembled already today, holding their pencils over the ballots, with all the little boxes. Did most women take to their new, belated right with aplomb, or did they take their time, marveling over the beauty of it all, the silent speech that would be heard?
Or did they think, like she did, that there was a long queue behind her and she had to get to work.
She wrote a thick X, drew over it twice, and dropped the paper in the ballot box.
That's how you spell a shout. With an X. ~ Sarah Jane Stratford

If education is about the communication of values, or meaningful information, and of wisdom and of tradition, between persons and across generations, it is important to know that it can only take place in the heart; that is, in the center of the human person. A voice from the lungs is not enough to carry another along with the meaning of our words. The voice has to carry with it the warmth and living fire of the heart around which the lungs are wrapped.2 ~ Stratford Caldecott

When we reflect upon the works of William Shakespeare it is of course an amazement to consider that one man could have produced such a sumptuous, wise, varied, thrilling, ever-delighting body of work, but that is of course the hallmark of genius. Only one man had the circumstances and gifts to give us such incomparable works, and William Shakespeare of Stratford was unquestionably that man - whoever he was. ~ Bill Bryson

Shakespeare is getting flyblown; a paternal government might well forbid writing about him, as they put his monument at Stratford beyond the reach of scribbling fingers. With all this buzz of criticism about, one may hazard one's conjectures privately, make one's notes in the margin; but, knowing that someone has said it before, or said it better, the zest is gone. Illness, it its kingly sublimity, sweeps all that aside and leaves nothing but Shakespeare and oneself. ~ Virginia Woolf

God is waiting for the response of our freedom. Our own choice, our own creativity, is essential to the drama, and this makes the world a drama fraught with real peril. ~ Stratford Caldecott

Your mum wrote that girls can do whatever," Ada continued. "Education. Profession."
Mary, now fully engaged, put down her book.
"My dear Ada, my mother wrote about how things ought to be, not how they are."
Ada continued looking displeased, which made Mary go on. "Of course, how are things to be the way they ought, unless we make them so? ~ Jordan Stratford

William Shakespeare. She knew him. They were,the three of them-Lucinda,Daniel,and Shakespeare-friends. There had been a summer afternoon when Daniel had taken Lucinda to visit Shakespeare at his home in Stratford. Toward sunset,they'd sat in the library,and while Daniel worked on his sketches at the window, Will had asked her question after question-all the while taking furious notes-about when she'd first met Daniel, how she felt about him, whether she thought she could one day fall in love.
Aside from Daniel,Shakespeare was the only one who knew the secret of Lucinda's indentity-her gender-and the love the players shared offstage. In exchange for his discretion,Lucinda was keeping the secret that Shakespeare was present that night at the Globe. Everyone else in the company assumed that he was in Stratford, that he'd handed over the reins of the theater to Master Fletcher.Instead,Will appeared incognito to see the play's opening night.
When she returned to his side,Shakespeare gazed deep into Lucinda's eyes. "You've changed."
"I-no,I'm still"-she felt the soft brocade around her shoulders. "Yes, I found the cloak."
"The cloak,is it?" He smiled at her, winked. "It suits you. ~ Lauren Kate

We are all "conservatives" in some sense, because we want to "conserve" some things while changing others. We are all "liberals" because we all want to be "free" in some respects. We are all "progressives" because we want to progress towards something: the question is, towards what? So instead of asking someone, are you conservative or liberal, right-wing or left-wing, why don't I ask what you want to conserve, and what to change, and why? Then we might finally have an intelligent debate about politics. ~ Stratford Caldecott

I belonged to Stratford Children's Theater when I was a boy growing up in Manchester. Even then, I was always doing character parts. ~ John Mahoney

Give that woman an inch and she takes the entire British Isles. ~ Sarah Jane Stratford

The central idea of the present book is very simple. It is that education is not primarily about the acquisition of information. It is not even about the acquisition of 'skills' in the conventional sense, to equip us for particular roles in society. It is about how we become more human (and therefore more free, in the truest sense of that word). This is a broader and a deeper question, but no less practical. Too often we have not been educating our humanity. We have been educating ourselves for doing rather than for being. ~ Stratford Caldecott

The world is a fabric woven of mysteries, and a mystery is a provocation to our humanity that cannot be dissolved by googling a few more bits of information. ~ Stratford Caldecott

James Agate, a great critic of the day, advised me that the way to learn your job properly was to learn Shakespeare, so I went to Stratford. It really sorts out the men from the boys. ~ Donald Sinden

She decided at once that she and the boy were cut of the same bookish cloth, and could quite possibly become co-conspirators. ~ Jordan Stratford

No! I had too many variables! Two of those variables were actually the same variable, so I revised the equation and then it all made perfect sense!" Ada was truly excited. "You seem truly excited, Lady Ada," said Anna cautiously. ~ Jordan Stratford

Pound notes. Her previous pay packets had been so small she never received paper, only coins. Which she liked. Coins had heft and history. Their value was irrefutable. She liked the way they jingled in her purse. That was the song of solvency. The cheerful assurance that there would be food and comfort through the day. It was better than any hymn. ~ Sarah Jane Stratford

To be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality ~ Stratford Caldecott

Few footprints of the great remain in the sand before the ever-flowing tide. Long ago it washed out Homer's. Curiosity follows him in vain; Greece and Asia perplex us with a rival Stratford-upon-Avon. The rank of Aristophanes is only conjectured from his gift to two poor players in Athens. The age made no sign when Shakespeare, its noblest son, passed away. ~ Robert Aris Willmott

I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him. ~ Sigmund Freud

In Stratford you either turn into an alcoholic or you better write. ~ Christopher Plummer

I have a house in Stratford and I got a house in Atlanta but I don't really live anywhere
I live on the road. I'm kind of like living in a suitcase, travelling so much. ~ Justin Bieber

She fixed things that were broken, and then began fixing things that weren't broken, or broke things so they could be fixed in ways no one understood or found particularly convenient. ~ Jordan Stratford

Today, in a world with instant access to Google, we rely on the electronic web to supply everything we need, from historical facts to word definitions and spellings as well as extended quotations. All of us who use a computer are aware of the shock of inner poverty that we suddenly feel when deprived (by a virus or other disaster) of our mental crutches even just for a day or a week. Plato is right: memory has been stripped from us, and all we possess is an external reminder of what we have lost, enabling us to pretend to a wisdom and an inner life we no longer possess in ourselves.13 ~ Stratford Caldecott

Two of the first plays I saw after I arrived in Britain were 'King Lear' in Liverpool, and 'Antony and Cleopatra' at Stratford. One was produced with hardly a backdrop and the other with gigantic scene changes. I was impressed by what connected the two: the words and their life beyond the stage. ~ Romesh Gunesekera

I'm not into those kind of rivalries. I remember standing out in front of Stratford, minding my own business. Carload of about eighty kids would pull up: 'STRATFORD SUCKS!' Am I supposed to run after these guys? I'd just stand there, you know. They'd back up. 'STRATFORD SUCKS! ... STRATFORD SUCKS!' I'd say, 'I know. I go there. You're wasting gas, man. ~ Bill Hicks

When I saw Paul Scofield do 'Love's Labor's Lost at Stratford,' that's when I saw the potential of the level of truth that could go on up there on a stage. I said, 'This is what I want to do.' ~ Michael Moriarty

Sometimes, of course, the artist does give up, saying, in effect, "I've done enough". Prospero declares that the revels are ended, and breaks his staff - his author retires to Stratford. At the very end, Mann did something similar. Interestingly, in both instances, death came quite quickly after that. ~ Philip Kitcher

Gordon Ramsay grew up in a tourist town, Stratford-Upon-Avon, but in a part tourists don't visit - a council estate: a concrete bunker subsidized by the local government, synonymous with deprivation and blight. ~ Bill Buford

There is no middle way. We cannot compromise on cruelty. ~ Tony Banks, Baron Stratford

William Shakespeare: I have a wife, yes, and I cannot marry the daughter of Sir Robert De Lesseps. You needed no wife come from Stratford to tell you that, and yet, you let me come to your bed.
Viola De Lesseps: Calf-love. I loved the writer and gave up the prize for a sonnet. ~ Marc Norman

It was the time of saying "Are we absolutely sure about this?" but it was also and more so the time of thinking it very loudly and not saying it. ~ Jordan Stratford

Entirely incidentally, a little-known fact about Shakespeare is that his father moved to Stratford-upon-Avon from a nearby village shortly before his son's birth. Had he not done so, the Bard of Avon would instead be known as the rather less ringing Bard of Snitterfield. ~ Bill Bryson