Sleeping Muse and Falling Rocket

The saddest line in all of Shakespeare: "I was adored once too."  - Sir Andrew  Aguecheek

"Go on Move along Else receive an unglad message in your bentover I'll come right up under and ventilate your undertenting." - ghost of a former robber in George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo

Byron gave the manuscript of his memoirs to publisher John Murray, for publication after his death. Murray, along with Byron's friends and executors, found the contents so shocking that they tore the manuscript apart and burned in Murray's office fireplace. To protect Byron's reputation.   

John Gielgud, on performing his one-man show The Ages of Man:  "You've no idea how much easier it is without a Juliet. When there's a beautiful girl above you on a balcony, or lying on a tomb with candles round her, naturally the audience look at her the whole time, and Romeo has to pull out all the stops to get any attention."

In 1961, in Blue Hawaii, Angela Lansbury played Elvis Presley's mother. She was only ten years older than Presley. In 1975, Lansbury played Gertrude to Albert Finney's Hamlet. She was only 11 years older than Finney.

I have always had a difficult time distinguishing between Geraldine McEwan and Dorothy Tutin. Love them both. Find them both fascinating and attractive. But would most assuredly have called each of them by the other's name.      

When Mozart's Don Giovanni premiered in Prague in 1787, Casanova was very probably in the audience. 

Always love that Dumas' heroes, the most famous sword-fighters in literary history, were named after the GUNS that Louis XIII issued them. Also, there were four of them.

How did I not know that Samuel Barber and Gian-Carlo Menotti were partners.

"I admire anyone who has a talent that makes me tingle. Like Chopin, or Conrad, or Pinter, or Beckett. Though not the later Beckett. I am sadly literal-minded, and in Beckett's recent work I find obscurity instead of mystery. And, of course, I worship Ethel Merman." - Ralph Richardson

"Strange how potent cheap music is." - Noel Coward, Private Lives

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” – John Lennon “Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.” – Wernher von Braun

Seriously, who was it who thought Laurence Harvey was a good idea?

" Jack was Judy to my Mr Punch, Harlequin to my Pierrot, Titania to my Puck, Herodias to my Salomé, Queen of Hearts to my Lewis Carroll. We shared flats, dressing rooms, boyfriends, bills, good times and bad times, success and failure; a couple of extravagant young dreamers, a couple of aching elders, always entertainers." - Lindsay Kemp on Jack Birkett (The Incredible Orlando)

The near anagrams of Viola and Olivia.

Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) and Moaning Myrtle (Shirley Henderson) appeared on the same episode of the series Happy Valley.