Ian Mckellen Quotes

'Macbeth,' I am ambivalent about. I don't like that play, in fact.

'Macbeth' is one of those books that demand all of your attention.

'Macbeth' is an amazing story.

The most likely explanation is the most practical. 'Macbeth' is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of 'Macbeth'. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting.

'Macbeth' was a very lucky play for me.

'Macbeth' is a show I'm going to do again someday.

I think 'Macbeth' was a play that I've always gotten so much out of. My wife played Lady Macbeth in a play, and I designed it. There are things in there that are just kind of extraordinary.

Macbeth was the first play I ever read.

I think there is this huge hole in Shakespeare that you do not know why Macbeth is who he is.

When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.

The most enduring stories in literature generally have some kind of crime at their center, whether it's the bloody butchery of 'Hamlet,' the lecherous misanthropes of Dickens or the lone gunman from 'The Great Gatsby.'

Maybe because I'm a nice and sweet person in life, I like the darker roles. The really dark one is Lady Macbeth.

Tales of power and ambition and intrigue and betrayal and desire - when you're telling those in a big way, you automatically want to go to Shakespeare.

'Ides of March' I did for scale - scale as a director, scale as an actor, scale as a writer.

All the great Shakespeare plays are about killing. 'Alas, poor Yorick,' that's about death. And in 'Romeo and Juliet' everyone up ends up dying. The greatest dramas in the world are all about sex, violence and death.

I'd really like to play Lady Macbeth.

I guess some characters always remain the same, and Macbeth is one of them.

Usually, you see this play as a guy who can't make up his mind, but our version is more of a revenge thriller than a man who is pontificating what he should do next. I've never seen a 'Hamlet' this big, this exciting, with this many cast members; it's quite a spectacle.

'Lady Macbeth' is a great opportunity for me to prove that maybe the outcome of 'The Falling' was not necessarily a fluke.

We just don't need any more 'Macbeth's in the world, however brilliant mine might turn out to be.

One of the advantages of appearing in such a play is that you begin to understand it properly, I feel Ophelia's tragedy was that she had been so used by everybody and felt that she bore a great burden of guilt.

Tragedy in life normally comes with betrayal and compromise, and trading on your integrity and not having dignity in life. That's really where failure comes.

I shall either perish or reign.

Just how many infants we will put to the sword is not yet clear. There is dickering to do. Those involved will take this disgrace to their graves.

I am confident ... that it is the determin'd purpose of that dark designing sordid ambitious vain proud arrogant and vindictive knave [George Washington]; to remove me from the face of the earth by assassination direct or indirect, and to ruin your fame and fortunes forever.