Monologue Quotes

“The perfect being, huh? There is no such thing as perfect in this world. That may sound cliché, but it’s the truth. The average person admires perfection and seeks to obtain it. But, what’s the point of achieving perfection? There is none. Nothing. Not a single thing. I loathe perfection! If something is perfect, then there is nothing left. There is no room for imagination. No place left for a person to gain additional knowledge or abilities. Do you know what that means? For scientists such as ourselves, perfection only brings despair. It is our job to create things more wonderful than anything before them, but never to obtain perfection. A scientist must be a person who finds ecstasy while suffering from that antimony. In short, the moment that foolishness left your mouth and reached my ears, you had already lost. Of course, that’s assuming you are a scientist”
― Tite Kubo

“I spun and jogged around the SUV. Climbing in I readjusted the seat from Godzilla setting to Normal so my feet could reach the pedals.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, Opal

“I am as silent as death. Do this: Go to your bedroom. Your nice, safe, warm bedroom that is not a glass coffin behind a morgue door. Lie down on your bed not made of ice. Stick your fingers in your ears. Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me. Because what if I am dead? How can someone without a beating heart, without breathing lungs live like I do? I must be dead. And this is my greatest fear: After 301 years, when they pull my glass coffin from this morgue, and they let my body thaw like chicken meat on the kitchen counter, I will be just like I am now. I will spend all of eternity trapped in my dead body. There is nothing beyond this. I will be locked within myself forever. And I want to scream. I want to throw open my eyes wake up and not be alone with myself anymore, but I can't. I can't.”
― Beth Revis, Across the Universe

“A word is a lot.”
― Etgar Keret

“We're living in a funny world kid, a peculiar civilization. The police are playing crooks in it, and the crooks are doing police duty. The politicians are preachers, and the preachers are politicians. The tax collectors collect for themselves. The Bad People want us to have more dough, and the good people are fighting to keep it from us. It's not good for us, know what I mean? If we had all we wanted to eat, we'd eat too much. We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry. That's the way I understand it. That's about the size of some of the arguments I've heard.”
― Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me

“I've never met someone who is so perfectly my favorite person. When I think about being with you every day, no part of me feels claustrophobic. And when I think about having to have the kinds of fights with you that Naomi and I used to have, there's nothing scary about it. Because I trust you, more than I've ever trusted anyone - The world looks different than I ever thought it could be, and I don't want to look for what's broken or what could go wrong. I don't want to brace myself for the worst and miss out on being with you. I want to be the one who gives you what you deserve - and I don't think I ever could deserve any of that, and I know this things between us isn't a sure thing, but that's what I want to aim for with you. Because I know no matter how long I get to love you, it will be worth whatever comes after.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse,—
Wherein I did not some notorious ill,
As kill a man, or else devise his death,
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,
Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,
Set deadly enmity between two friends,
Make poor men's cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.”
― William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus

“...every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion.”
― Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter

“......cut us off from our families, our history. So we made it our own place - Chinatown. A place for preservation and self-preservation; give them what they feel what's right, is safe; make it fit the idea of what is out there..Chinatown and indeed being chinese is and always has been, from the very beginning a construction,a performance of features, gestures, culture and exoticism, invention/reinvention of stylization.”
― Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown

“Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping. All the kind of the Launces have this very fault. I have received my proportion, like the prodigious son, and am going with Sir Proteus to the Imperial's court. I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives. My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebble stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog. A Jew would have wept to have seen our parting. Why, my grandam, having no eyes, look you, wept herself blind at my parting. Nay, I'll show you the manner of it. This shoe is my father. No, this left shoe is my father. No, no, this left shoe is my mother. Nay, that cannot be so neither. Yes, it is so, it is so -- it hath the worser sole. This shoe with the hole in it is my mother, and this my father. A vengeance on't! There 'tis. Now, sir, this staff is my sister, for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a wand. This hat is Nan, our maid. I am the dog. No, the dog is himself, and I am the dog -- O, the dog is me, and I am myself. Ay, so, so. Now come I to my father: 'Father, your blessing.' Now should not the shoe speak a word for weeping. Now should I kiss my father -- well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother. O, that she could speak now like a wood woman! Well, I kiss her -- why, there 'tis: here's my mother's breath up and down. Now come I to my sister; mark the moan she makes. Now the dog all this while sheds not a tear nor speaks a word!”
― William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona

“the capture
the rapture
the rupture
of a soul
a solo symphony”
― Sarah Kane

“I hear nothing but the hustle and bustle of the city. Cars with flashing lights zip past me. People talk, some loud, some quiet. I whisper to myself. “This is what it’s like to go unnoticed.” I take in a deep breath and inhale the freezing air. It smells like ice here. Ice and cigarettes.”
― Rachel Ellynn M., mind weaving

“All the beautiful waitresses existed like eternal responsibilities.”
― Spalding Gray, The Journals of Spalding Gray

“I see it all. I feel it all. I am inspired. My eyes fill with tears. Yet even as I feel this. I lash my frenzy higher and higher. It foams. It becomes artificial, insincere. Words and words and words, how they gallop - how they lash their long manes and tails, but for some fault in me I cannot fly with them, scattering women and string bags. There is some flaw in me - some fatal hesitancy, which, if I pass it over, turns to foam and falsity”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle: I remember
The first time ever Caesar put it on;
'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,
That day he overcame the Nervii:
Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger through:
See what a rent the envious Casca made:
Through this well-beloved Brutus stabb'd;
And as he pluck'd his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Caesar follow'd it,
As rushing out of doors, to be resolved
If Brutus so unkindly knock'd, or no;
For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel:
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him!
This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms,
Quite vanquishi'd him: then burst his mighty heart;
And, in his mantle muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey's statua,
Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“A fool, a fool! I met a fool i' the forest,
A motley fool; a miserable world!
As I do live by food, I met a fool
Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun,
Andrail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms and yet a motley fool.
'Good morrow, fool,' quoth I. 'No, sir,' quoth he,
'Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune:'
And then he drew a dial from his poke,
And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
Says very wisely, 'It is ten o'clock:
Thus we may see,' quoth he, 'how the world wags:
'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine,
And after one hour more 'twill be eleven;
And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale.' When I did hear
The motley fool thus moral on the time,
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,
That fools should be so deep-contemplative,
And I did laugh sans intermission
An hour by his dial. O noble fool!
A worthy fool! Motley's the only wear.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“How curiously one is changed by the addition, even at a distance, of a friend. How useful an office one's friends perform when they recall us. Yet how painful to be recalled, to be mitigated, to have one's self adulterated, mixed-up, become part of another.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“When conversing, some people regularly stop talking, not to listen, but to rest their tongues.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Stop it! Just give me a second!”

“Alright, alright, everyone—” Hank flashed his palms like stop signs and then waved them around as if he were a city flagman exercising his authority to halt traffic. “Stand back, stand back—hands to yourself... in your pockets… there you go.” Hank loved the spotlight and demanded it whenever opportunity presented itself. For once, I actually welcomed his inflated need for attention. The pressing against my back let up, and my friends stepped aside.

Pausing first for dramatic effect (typical Hank) he drew in a deep breath and delivered an improvised monologue (also typical Hank.)

“People, people, people… look at what you’re doing. Can’t you see the effect you’re having on this sweet, innocent frightened child? I mean, what is up with the sudden aggressive-mob behavior here? Remember, people, this is our friend! Our colleague! Our schoolmate, chum, pal, our number-one supporter most days! Does she deserve this kind of peer pressure? …this group coercion? …this physical harassment? I say nay! Nay, I tell you! Now I know how excited you are to see her fi~nal~ly agree—after many, many grueling months of relentless persuading—to become one of us. To attempt a mad stab at initiation. To feel what it is to be spectacular! But give the girl some room to breathe! If you push a frightened lamb, she’s gonna turn tail and scamper off in the opposite direction, baaaahhing all the way. Then what will our efforts be for? For naught, I say! For naught! So the question here isn’t will she move or not move, but rather will she dare or not dare?”

“The actual question is: are you gonna shut it or have us shut it for you?” Cory piped in with a pantomimed zip of the lip.

Hank scoffed, blowing his bangs out of his face with a contrary huff, but he didn’t say another word.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year

“I am very adept at killing all sorts of things! I have slain dragons, drowned armies and persuaded the earthquakes and tempests to devour cities! You are a man. You are all alone as all men are. I am surrounded by ancient friends and allies. Rogue, what do you have to counter that?”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“A Jew ain't only a religion, and it ain't a race. It isn't an ethnicity, and you aren't disqualified if you're good at spreading mayonnaise on white bread or bad at money or good at sports or bad at guilt. It ain't about whether your mother is Jewish or your father converted or both parents fasted on Yom Kippur. It don't matter if you were bar or bat mitzvahed, or if your grandma's recipe for chicken soup kicked Campbell's ass, or any of that.

It ain't about a toe in Israel, or an opinion on Palestine, or an uncle who died of a heart attack in Brooklyn or Queens, or a family story from Ellis Island, or an aunt who was murdered by nazis or Russian pogromchiks, or whether or not three-fifths of your person is scared shitless of Auggie's "schvartzes," or at least the young bucks you see walking with guns out and half their pants down.”
― Alex Kudera, Auggie's Revenge

“Propaganda is where a demagogue plays pedagogue and starts a monologue to leave their audience agog.”
― Stewart Stafford

“La vie n'est pas un monologue théâtral.
Les grands discours ne mènent nulle part, c'est juste un act s'ils ne conduisent pas
pas à pas,
à commencer à agir,
s'il n'y a aucune action dessus.
Ne confondez pas être solidaire et solitaire.”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, L'ABC du bonheur et bonne humeur: Conseils pour une vie pleine de joie et briser les barrières qui vous séparent d'obtenir ce travail si rêvé

“Why many words when the word is one.”
― Wald Wassermann

“There was a time when the physics books said that quantum fluctuations did not have any cause other than their existence being mandated by the laws of physics. I for one would like to propose an absurdly simplistic theory. Teo is one not wanting to be alone. As such teo fluctuates itself. Teo fluctuates itself so not to be by itself; so to embrace itself. Interestingly enough teo leads to toe and toe leads to teo. As such the theory of everything. Teo's toe equation is love. Love sweet love.
It's as simple as that.”
― Wald Wassermann

“It is quite beautiful, that level of death, although to some it could be considered nightmarish. Whatda see old pal? Do you see death? Is he waiting at your doorstep for you and ya kin? Does he carrya scythe? Is he hooded like the healers? Or are you fortunate enough to gaze upon his face? Do you see an old, wrinkled man there? Eyes the only thing darker than his skin, with his hair in stark contrast? You kow what they say, black isn’t a colour, but a shade. Void of all colour, just like my pal there is void of all life.
Or do you see a young man hell bent on revenge, trying to bring a loved one back from the grave? Trying so hard he will put every living soul in the ground to lift his love out of it? Is he pissed off that he can grant death, but the one thing he wants, life, is out of his grasp? Does he speak to you at night? When you sleep, with all the lights out, does he glide silently to your bedside and touch you? Does it hurt? Or do you not feel anything, just close your eyes and never open them again? Do you fear death, Steven?”
― Finn Eccleston, The Community

“Ah yes, of course, Spiders. Is it their size? Do you fear the ones you cannot see, dunnot sense until they bite you and you die a horrible, painful death? Or would you prefer a giant, fist-sized one? One that towers above buildings like in an old shit-show production? I quite think you would.
Now personally, one of my least favourite thing about spiders is their fangs. You see, their fangs are a mixture of rat’s fur and small dragon teeth. They manage to be sharp, deadly, and disgustingly hairy. Oh, and the colour of death. It makes me shiver just to think about those pincers closing in on a nice, fleshy, alive part of my body. I do think I’d be forced to amputate or decapitate. Possibly both.”
"Anywhore, their fangs aren’t what get most people. It’s their eyes. Kinda creepy, don’t ya think? We have two, they have….well, too many ov’em. Would you like to see yourself reflected umpteenth times in a spider’s trippily reflective little eyes? Right before they smile and their fangs grab ya that is. No? I should hope not. You also have the venom and that shifty way they move to consider. Venom can kill anything, no matter how tough or large they are. And the whole eight legs shuffly shifty quicky thing just spooks the shit outta me mate. Death and spiders. They’re pretty much the same thing to some. Some being me, of course. Then again, I’m quite normal.”
― Finn Eccleston, The Community

“Ah yes, of course, Spiders. Is it their size? Do you fear the ones you cannot see, dunnot sense until they bite you and you die a horrible, painful death? Or would you prefer a giant, fist-sized one? One that towers above buildings like in an old shit-show production? I quite think you would.
Now personally, one of my least favourite thing about spiders is their fangs. You see, their fangs are a mixture of rat’s fur and small dragon teeth. They manage to be sharp, deadly, and disgustingly hairy. Oh, and the colour of death. It makes me shiver just to think about those pincers closing in on a nice, fleshy, alive part of my body. I do think I’d be forced to amputate or decapitate. Possibly both.
Anywhore, their fangs aren’t what get most people. It’s their eyes. Kinda creepy, don’t ya think? We have two, they have….well, too many ov’em. Would you like to see yourself reflected umpteenth times in a spider’s trippily reflective little eyes? Right before they smile and their fangs grab ya that is. No? I should hope not. You also have the venom and that shifty way they move to consider. Venom can kill anything, no matter how tough or large they are. And the whole eight legs shuffly shifty quicky thing just spooks the shit outta me mate. Death and spiders. They’re pretty much the same thing to some. Some being me, of course. Then again, I’m quite normal.”
― Finn Eccleston, The Community

“He felt his heart constrict as he prepared to do the
unthinkable. To take someone’s life on a whim, without
mercy or hint of humanity. He felt like he should’ve said something.

Explain why he was doing this. To close the situation for good.

In his mind, he tried to justify his actions. This man
caused so much pain and chaos. But the man was dying, and there was no point in wasting his breath on a speech just to appease himself.”
― Robin Dalmar, Cove of Storms