“Shakespeare. No one reads Shakespeare in a bar unless it’s a ploy to pick up girls. All I’m saying is you might have better luck up front.”

“As Shakespeare says, if you're going to do a thing you might as well pop right at it and get it over.”

“Oh, if Shakespeare says it, that's all right.”

“People are going to say, ‘Well, it’s not very truthful.’ But a songwriter doesn’t care about what’s truthful. What he cares about is what should’ve happened, what could’ve happened. That’s its own kind of truth. It’s like people who read Shakespeare plays, but they never see a Shakespeare play. I think they just use his name.”

“One demands a little originality in these days, even from murderers," said Lady Swaffham. "Like dramatists, you know--so much easier in Shakespeare's time, wasn't it? Always the same girl dressed up as a man, and even that borrowed from Boccaccio or Dante or somebody. I'm sure if I'd been a Shakespeare hero, the very minute I saw a slim-legged young page-boy I'd have said: 'Ods bodikins! There's that girl again!”

“All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare”