Dearest Horatio: By The Time You Read This, Ill Be Dead. This Is How I Think Its Gonna Happen: Laertes

“Dearest Horatio: By the time you read this, I’ll be dead. This is how I think it’s gonna happen: Laertes will stab me, then I’ll stab Laertes, then Gertrude will drink from the cup poisoned by Claudius. Then, I’ll go over and stab Claudius and give the crown to Fortinbras. Love: Hamlet. P.S.: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were beheaded in England.”

—

My poor boy

“Your strange face haunts me.”

— Iris Murdoch, from a letter to Wallace Robson written c. April 1952

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something–a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things–which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours”

— Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“Heads.”

— Rosencrantz, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead