Michelle Dockery Quotes

Shakespeare wrote about what was happening during the time; it still relates to us now.

I think Shakespeare had a lot to contribute with his understanding of the human condition.

I think about Shakespeare. Because there have been hundreds of variations of Shakespeare's plays since they've been written, and I believe it's because they're important. They're still relevant today. 'Roots' is still relevant today. The idea that we shouldn't tell this story again is very strange to me.

Shakespeare is definitely my first love.

One of the reasons we all still read Jane Austen is because her books are about universal things which still matter today - love, money, family. They haven't gone out of fashion, so it's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater to rework her in a contemporary style.

I grew up with Shakespeare, and there are so many wonderful teachings in those plays. The stories are all so unique and timeless. There is just so much learning in that body of work, and that is something I will always go back to.

At the roots, people are still people. That's why Shakespeare is so popular no matter what the language.

If you are feeling something, then Shakespeare felt it and wrote about it - and wrote about it so eloquently.

I am rather partial to Shakespeare, though I haven't done loads. But when it's done right, there's nothing like it. There are layers upon layers upon layers, and you unpack new things constantly. I don't know how he knew so many things - about the world, about women, about human nature, life, death, our fears and hopes.

I developed a prejudice in high school that it was all going to be boring. That kind of teenage, why-do-I-have-to-read-these-goddamn-classics feeling. And then you discover that the classics are classics because they're lively. They don't stick around because they're boring. If they're boring, they go away.

Shakespeare is all big themes, like the most amazing love, or the most scary war.

A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.

'Romeo & Juliet' is still relevant and real.

I fell in love with Shakespeare when I was 12, and I read the whole works. Yes, I was precocious.

And who cares, five years down the road, what most movies made or didn't make? If it's good, it stands up.

If you're going to do Shakespeare, do Shakespeare. There's a reason why he's been performed for hundreds of years. His words affect people on a very deep level. He's the true humanist. That all comes through his text, his words.

What makes a book great, a so-called classic, it its quality of always being modern, of its author, though he be long dead, continuing to speak to each new generation.

If something becomes old-fashioned, it was no good to start with. Think about it. Michelangelo is not old-fashioned.

Shakespeare wrote about love. I write about love. Shakespeare wrote about gang warfare, family feuds and revenge. I write about all the same things.

I love studying folklore and legends. The stories that people passed down for a thousand years without any sort of marketing support are obviously saying something appealing about the basic human condition.

Comedy ages quicker than tragedy, to the extent that we can't know if the 10 commandments may originally have been 10 hilarious one-liners.

We took Beowulf, the epic poem in Old English, and put it right together with John Gardner's contemporary retelling. If you bring it into today, we really feel that it has something very fresh to say now.

It's very weird about movies: you never know which ones are going to stay alive and which one are going to be meaningless. When you're there, you couldn't possibly predict it. Some things slowly die, and others slowly stay a while.

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

Shakespeare is universal.