"Ultimately, Anthony Burgess's emphasis on the multiplicity of meanings latent in the text of Shakespeare's life foregrounds his own appropriation of Shakespeare … Clearly this is not an inconsistency on Burgess's part but a deliberate pointer at the inevitability of appropriating any given text, particularly that most irresistible one of Shakespeare's life."

"Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends."

"Is she not passing fair?"

"O God! methinks, it were a happy life, To be no better than a homely swain; To sit upon a hill, as I do now, To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, Thereby to see the minutes how they run: How many make the hour full complete, How many hours bring about the day, How many days will finish up the year, How many years a mortal man may live."

"My object has been to dramatise, like the Greeks (a modest phrase), striking passages of history, as they did of history and mythology. You will find all this very unlike Shakspeare; and so much the better in one sense, for I look upon him to be the worst of models, though the most extraordinary of writers."

"I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the furniture"

"Good frend for Jesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare Blese be the man that spares these stones And curst be he that moves my bones"

"Crabbed age and youth cannot live together: Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care"

"To begin then with Shakespeare; he was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the Images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature; he look'd inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of Mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches; his serious swelling into Bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of the poets."

"What light through yonder window breaks?"

"Off with his head!"

"I was in love with my bed."

"Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third."

"She's beautiful, and therefore to be woo'd; She is a woman, therefore to be won."

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

"Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York."

"A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

"I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me."

"The fox barks not, when he would steal the lamb."

"Some of Shakspeare's plays I have never read; while others I have gone over perhaps as frequently as any unprofessional reader. Among the latter are Lear, Richard Third, Henry Eighth, Hamlet, and especially Macbeth. I think nothing equals Macbeth. It is wonderful. Unlike you gentlemen of the profession, I think the soliloquy in Hamlet commencing "O, my offence is rank surpasses that commencing "To be, or not to be." But pardon this small attempt at criticism."

"He that tries to recommend him by select Quotations, will succeed like the Pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his House to Sale, carried a Brick in his Pocket as a Specimen."

"This figure that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut, Wherein the graver had a strife With Nature, to out-do the life: O could he but have drawn his wit As well in brass, as he has hit His face; the print would then surpass All that was ever writ in brass: But since he cannot, reader, look Not on his picture, but his book."

"Shakespear has in this play shewn himself well versed in history and state-affairs. Coriolanus is a store-house of political commonplaces. Any one who studies it may save himself the trouble of reading Burke's Reflections, or Paine's Rights of Man, or the Debates in both Houses of Parliament since the French Revolution or our own. The arguments for and against aristocracy or democracy, on the privileges of the few and the claims of the many, on liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, peace and war, are here very ably handled, with the spirit of a poet and the acuteness of a philosopher. Shakespear himself seems to have had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question, perhaps from some feeling of contempt for his own origin; and to have spared no occasion of baiting the rabble. What he says of them is very true: what he says of their betters is also very true, though he dwells less upon it."

"Soul of the Age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare... Thou art a monument, without a tomb, And art alive still while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read, and praise to give."

"He was not of an age, but for all time!"

"Talk to him of Jacob's ladder, and he would ask the number of the steps."

"That questionable superfluity—small beer."

"The sharp employ the sharp; verily, a man may be known by his attorney."

"As for the brandy, "nothing extenuate;" and the water, put nought in it malice."

"Self-defence is the clearest of all laws; and for this reason - the lawyers didn't make it."

"Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest."

"Some people are so fond of ill-luck that they run half-way to meet it."

"The ugliest of trades have their moments of pleasure. Now, if I were a grave-digger, or even a hangman, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment."

"A blessed companion is a book,—a book that fitly chosen is a life-long friend."

"The life of the husbandman,—a life fed by the bounty of earth and sweetened by the airs of heaven."

"He was so good he would pour rose-water on a toad."

"God said, "Let us make man in our image." Man said, 'Let us make God in our image.""

"He is one of those wise philanthropists who in a time of famine would vote for nothing but a supply of toothpicks."

"The surest way to hit a woman’s heart is to take aim kneeling."

"That fellow would vulgarize the day of judgment."

"The best thing I know between France and England is the sea."

"Walking about? With a hole in his forehead full of maggots" "Aye. It were like a damn fisherman's tub."

"Did you not think of burying them?" Walter snorted in a quite ordinary way."

"Oh Walter en't been the same man, you know...slow, very slow since he came back."

"If it was easy, everyone would do it rather than going around telling you their ideas and saying how they could be a writer if they had the time."

"People who are intolerant, categorize and over-react... should all be dragged against a wall and shot."

"Writing is nothing less than thought transference, the ability to send one's ideas out into the world, beyond time and distance, taken at the value of the words, unbound from the speaker."