"My careereth is over. I am making a horseth asseth of myselfeth. Mark, I'm begging you. I'm BEGGING you. You want this kind of performance? Let me play Lady Anne."

"Miss McFadden, today I begin rehearsals for my first New York play. It will be the most important day of my life. Am I nervous? No, I am not nervous. For I have meditated. I am relaxed. I am calm. I am confident. You, on the other hand, have not meditated, and therefore you are a pain in the ass."

""It never occurred to us that William Shakespeare wrote the Wizard of Oz. However, Elliot Garfield makes a splendid Wicked Witch of the North." Tacky. Tacky. Well, if they're gonna kill me. Let 'em kill me with panache."

"If you were a Broadway musical, people would be humming your face."

"I will bring home anyone or anything I chose including a one-eyed Episcopalian Kangaroo if that happens to be my kinky inclination."

"I play the guitar whenever I cannot sleep, and I meditate every morning, complete with chanting and burning incense, so if you have to walk around I'd appreciate a little tiptoeing. Also: I sleep in the nude. "Au buffo." Winter and summer, rain or snow, with the windows open. And because I may have to go to the potty or to the fridge in the middle of the night, and because I do not want to put on jammies which I do not own in the first place, unless you're looking for a quick thrill or your daughter an advanced education I'd keep my door closed."

"Patricia Pearcy - Rhonda"

"[to her Nurse] I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all. No... not the artful postures of love, not playful and poetical games of love for the amusement of an evening, but love that overthrows life. Unbiddable, ungovernable - like a riot in the heart, and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture. Love - like there has never been in a play."

"I would stay asleep my whole life, if I could dream myself into a company of players."

"The Master of the Revels despises us all for vagrants and peddlers of bombast. But my father, James Burbage, had the first license to make a company of players from Her Majesty, and he drew from poets the literature of the age. We must show them that we are men of parts. Will Shakespeare has a play. I have a theatre. The Curtain is yours."

"I have always liked movies, and sometimes an image or a scene or a character stays with me for years and inspires me when I write. For example: the magic in Fanny and Alexander or the story within a story of Shakespeare in Love."

"Joe Roberts - John Webster"

"Nicholas Le Prevost - Sir Robert De Lesseps"

"Jill Baker - Lady De Lesseps"

"Imelda Staunton - Nurse"

"Simon Callow - Edmund Tylney"

"Sandra Reinton - Rosaline"

"Rupert Everett - Christopher Marlowe"

"Martin Clunes - Richard Burbage"

"Patrick Barlow - Will Kempe"

"Steven Beard - Makepeace"

"Tim McMullen - Frees"

"Steve O'Donnell - Lambert"

"Ben Affleck - Ned Alleyn"

"Tom Wilkinson - Hugh Fennyman"

"Colin Firth - Lord Wessex"