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354 pages, Hardcover
First published April 11, 2017
โDo you blame Shakespeare for any of it?โ
The question is so unlikely, so nonsensical coming from such a sensible man, that I canโt suppress a smile. โI blame him for all of it,โ I say.
โBut that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heartโby making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.โ
Actors are by nature volatileโalchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster.
You can justify anything, if you do it poetically enough.
We cracked up. But we didn't really shatter until we came back together again.
โBut that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heartโby making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.โ
โWe felt all the passions of the characters we played as if they were our own. But a characterโs emotions donโt cancel out the actorโs โ instead you feel both at once.โ
โInstead he was handsome the way you think of the devil as handsome โ forbiddingly so.โ
โActors are by nature volatileโalchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster.โ
โBut that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart โ by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.โ
โThe real sky was enormous overhead, making our mirrors and twinkling stage lights seem ridiculous- Manโs futile attempt to imitate Godโ
โWhich of us could say we were more sinned against than sinning? We were so easily manipulated - confusion made a masterpiece of us.โ
"Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?"
"I blame him for all of it."
โThe sky was clear and quiet, stars peering curiously down at us from a wide dome of indigo. The water, too, was still, and I thought, what liars they are, the sky and the water. Still and calm and clear, like everything was fine. It wasnโt fine, and really, it never would be again.โ
โYou can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.โ
โNothing mattered much after that morning. Our two soulsโif not all sixโwere forfeit.โ
โMy infatuation [โฆ] transcended any notion of gender.โ
โHow tremendous the agony of unmade decisions.โ
โItโs easier now to be Romeo, or Macbeth, or Brutus, or Edmund. Someone else.โ