Top 120 Lear Quotes & Sayings

It isn't difficult to leave King Lear or Macbeth, but once you have gone back to yourself, you want it to be the same self you have always been.

'The Iron Lady' is not a biopic. Phyllida Lloyd and Meryl Streep coined it 'King Lear for girls.'

Shakespeare wrote all there is that we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear.'

I have no desire to play King Lear or Hamlet. I never had a grand ambition. I just followed my nose.

I consider myself a disciple of Norman Lear. And one of the things he did was topic-driven humor.

What is your name?" asked Lear. Caius," said Kent. And whence do you hail?" From Bonking, sire." Well, yes, lad, as do we all," said Lear, "but from what town?

Norman Lear considers almost any Christian who speaks up for and acts on his or her faith to be 'dangerous.'

One advantage of doing Lear at 70 is that you don't have to play an old man.

My favorite-ever version of 'King Lear' is the 1971 film by Peter Brooks. He has this enormous fur thing, and it adds enormous gravitas.

King Lear alone among these plays has a distinct double action. Besides this, it is impossible, I think, from the point of view of construction, to regard the hero as the leading figure.

Counterfeit Kings is the King Lear of space operas. Science fiction has a fresh, new, no-nonsense voice and his name is Adam Connell.

I love Amanda Lear, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sharon Stone.

A laughing Lear would be monstrous. Not so a laughing Romeo and Juliet.

Some days it seems I've done as much as I can here and I think I'll go and try my luck in America. But then a call comes from the Globe theatre. They want me for King Lear, playing Edmund.

Norman Lear is my all-time, ultimate hero. He's an amazing man. That's one person I'm looking forward to meeting. What he did, with shows and sitcoms, he's my hero.

I remember the great work that Norman Lear did. That was an incredible heyday to be a black actor.

Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon The author of Lear remains unshaken Willie Herbert or Mary Fitton What does it matter? The Sonnets were written.

When I was growing up my favorite show was 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show', and I loved all the stuff that Norman Lear did.

My fear with 'Lear' was that I would not have the physical or vocal strength. But this play, it's all in your head. That was one of the really interesting things when we were rehearsing it: We were all exhausted because it was all up here.

The only time I've played a real baddy was when I was Regan in 'King Lear.'

I think I'm going to have to get a flying license very soon, and maybe one of those Lear jets. It beats motorcycles all to hell.

Directing Skyfall was one of the best experiences of my professional life, but I have theatre and other commitments, including productions of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and King Lear, that need my complete focus over the next year and beyond.

I've played Lear three times, I would love to do it again.

I guess if they ever do a remake of 'Sophie's Choice,' I could play the Meryl Streep part. I've got to work on my Polish accent. Maybe I'll be the definitive King Lear one day. You know, if they ever feel that King Lear should be more Jewy.

You have to get through the Hamlet hoop as a young actor. Your classical qualifications are based on the quality of your Hamlet. And then, as an older actor, you have to get through the Lear hoop. And I'm approaching the Lear hoop.

King Lear is undoubtedly the greatest play ever written by Shakespeare - or anybody else for that matter. Hamlet is certainly great, but it doesn't contain as many elements of humanity as we see in Lear.

In a very real way Norman [Lear] godfathered me into my career. He was the best mentor anybody could have ever had.

I feel like I've been on EastEnders all my life and now I'm playing King Lear.

I was discovered, or mentored, by Norman Lear, who plucked me from the grinder of relative obscurity.

A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were written.

One time, I had to do Edgar in 'King Lear' and Owl in 'Winnie the Pooh' on the same day.

To watch King Lear is to approach the recognition that there is indeed no meaning in life, and that there are limits to human understanding.

From the American retelling of Romeo and Juliet in West Side Story to the Japanese adaptation of King Lear in Ran, Shakespeare's cultural influence is virtually limitless.

To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago.

I want to keel over on stage playing King Lear at age 99 or something like that.

When I closed in "King Lear" I went into a period of depression for about three weeks, and every actor I've talked to who's ever played a major, major Shakespeare role has done this.

Norman Lear was talking about everything in the '70s... race, sexism, all of it. The network comedy really stayed away from that in the 1980s and 1990s.

When you're playing King Lear, you have to have a little humour, or you will have no tragedy when the king dies.

I want to play King Lear, Macbeth, Benedict, Coriolanus. I wouldn't mind doing Hamlet again. Well, I'm a little old. Perhaps I can rub Vaseline on the audience's eyes.

O, let me kiss that hand! KING LEAR: Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.

I was with Lanford Wilson in Philadelphia watching a play of his when the call came from Hollywood. 'Norman Lear wants to do 'Baltimore' on television,' Lanford said. 'What do you think?'

I just looked preposterous. It would be 'King Lear' and I'd walk on with Cordelia's dead body in my arms and the audience would hoot with laughter. The only time they didn't laugh was when I was doing comedy.

I've been lucky to get some path-breaking films, which proved to be the turning point in my career. Be it 'Rock on!' 'The Last Lear' or 'Raajneeti,' directors started working in a different way.

I used to think 'King Lear' was an analysis of insanity, but I don't really think it is. When Lear is supposed to be at his most insane, he is actually understanding the world for the first time.

I am what I am as a writer because of Norman Lear and Spike Lee. Norman Lear in particular.

Any older actor knows the last great mountain to climb is to play King Lear and now, if I ever play Lear, I will have done the pre-preparation because I had to go into the play and read it over and over again.

There isn't a King Lear for women, or a Henry V, or a Richard III. You reach a level where you can handle that stuff technically and mentally, and it's not there.

If you are playing King Lear you are the centre of attention anyway. You don't need to draw attention to yourself. It's all laid out for you.

The Oresteia, King Lear, Dostoevsky's 'The Devils' no less than the art of Giotto or the 'Passions' of Bach, inquire into, dramatize, the relations of man and woman to the existence of the gods or of God.

Shakespeare wrote all there is that we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear.

I do not see how it is possible for an intelligent human being to conclude that the Song of Solomon is the work of God, and that the tragedy of Lear was the work of an uninspired man.

I've made a dog's breakfast of English history, geography, 'King Lear,' and the English language in general.

I'm mainly an airport author, and if you're trying to take your mind off the journey, you're not going to read 'King Lear.'

I think Shakespeare got drunk after he finished King Lear. That he had a ball writing it.

I thought I was gonna do Lear, but I'm gonna do Maura.

King Lear by William Shakespeare frightens me. I've never done King Lear, I guess partially because my father dwindled into dementia in his last years and King Lear is such an accurate portrayal of a father figure suffering from dementia - the play was almost intolerable for me.

I hunt and fish, and I don't fly on Lear jets, and I don't smoke Cuban cigars.

When I was 16, we moved to live in Stratford-Upon-Avon. That was the year of Paul Scofield's 'Lear.' I think he is still widely perceived as the only actor who has got his flag at the top of the mountain.

I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal.

The actor is too prone to exaggerate his powers; he wants to play Hamlet when his appearance is more suitable to King Lear.