A.J. Hartley > Quotes

“I’ve never fully trusted people who don’t like dogs. They rarely turn out well.”
― A.J. Hartley, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

“Priests might divide the world into good and bad. In battle there was strong and weak and nothing else.”
― A.J. Hartley, Macbeth

“You're a kid,' said Alexandra. 'There is no just about it. Only adults say just a kid and what the heck do they know about anything? Have you looked at their world lately?”
― A.J. Hartley, Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact

“Sign this... and I'll show you”
― A.J. Hartley, Chasing Shadows

“Suicide was a sin. It would condemn her for eternity. But so was murder, even a just one sought out of righteous grief.
The revenger always dug two graves, they said. One for his victim. One for himself. She’d never understood that old saying till now.
Either way she was dead.”
― A.J. Hartley, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

“Almost is such a wonderful word don’t you think?” the shopkeeper said with a wink. “So full of wiggle-room and loopholes, so not-absolutely-anything. Almost killed means still very much alive, which I am sure you will agree makes all the difference.”
― A.J. Hartley, Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact

“Magic came from within, from turning a secret key that lurked inside, waiting for the words to set it free. The”
― A.J. Hartley, Macbeth

“Almost is such a wonderful word, don't you think?" said the shopkeeper with a wink. "So full of wiggle rom and loopholes, so not absolutely anything.”
― A.J. Hartley, Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact

“And school isn’t the same as theatre,” said Xavier, gazing round the building. “In a classroom you can talk this stuff through, interrogate it, contextualize it, and so on. You can’t do that here. There’s no pop-up footnotes to explain the subtext while the story is happening in front of you. That’s different. Makes it feel…real. Or at least endorsed: like, this is how it is and we’re not going to explain it. Study it critically by all means, talk about it, but don’t stage Othello and expect me to just sit there and drink it in, okay? Not gonna happen. Not Othello, and not The Merchant of Venice.”
― A.J. Hartley, Burning Shakespeare

“If you wanted reflections on the nature of the universe and your place in it, you should have stayed in school. You want fart noises and cock jokes, I’m your man.”
― A.J. Hartley, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

“Ah,” I said with a bleak smile. “What was a quaint and silly folk belief becomes a major news item when white people believe in it.”
― A.J. Hartley, Firebrand

“Where on earth do you get a rose in Elsinore in the middle of winter?” “Don’t you want it?” She took the flower from him, kissed his cheek. No bristles. No beard. A clean-shaven man with a kind and amiable face. Scheming. She didn’t doubt it. But he was a diplomat by training. It was only to be expected. And if he’d lacked those skills perhaps neither of them would have managed Old Hamlet’s death, the marriage, the succession so easily.”
― A.J. Hartley, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

“Content,” Guildenstern agreed. “One aspires to happiness, but not too much since one would not wish to be disappointed.”
― A.J. Hartley, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

“Slavery comes in many guises lady. A woman should recognize that.”
― A.J. Hartley, Macbeth

“The prince put the dagger on the table. “Sorry.”
Yorick bent forward and looked up into his eyes. “Don’t forget our respective places here. I’m your clown. Your plaything. Your toy. Scarcely human. No need to apologise.”
― A.J. Hartley, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

“What kind of love demands the life of another? A child at that?”
“Danish love, my sweet. Can’t you smell it?”
― A.J. Hartley, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

“When the line is delivered, Hamlet is gazing on Yorrick's skull, casually unearthed by the gravedigger. Yorrick's fame grew out of being the line which accompanied what is perhaps the single most recognizable iconic image in literature: a man in black, considering a human skull. Show some form of that picture to most moderately educated people and plenty who aren't and they'll know that the man is Hamlet. Such things don't find their way into the popular consciousness by accident and trivial though the line may sound, it speaks to the heart of the play: a man compelled by circumstances outside of his control to confront his own mortality.”
― A.J. Hartley, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

“And so the Scots grew restless, moaning all the time as only they could.”
― A.J. Hartley, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

“Woman, man, mole, maggot – they’re all the same, when all’s said and done, except for slight variations in cognitive ability. many weighty books on magic that looked as if they had been bound in human skin at the beginning of time but had probably been mass-produced last week by a factory in Catford. She fought to get away, only to find herself in the chill nursery with its tiny crib, the one her husband had carved so carefully from supple ash, the first and last thing that he ever made with his own hands. The crib rocked back and forth, and though she did not want to look inside, the dream always made her. Afterward, she woke crying, deep racking sobs that cramped her belly till she gasped with pain, surging, pulsing, wrenching stabs of agony deep as childbirth. The sleepwalking began on the second night. She woke in the kitchens rubbing her hands as if washing them, and though she could remember nothing of the dream that led her there, she skulked back to her chamber oppressed with guilt and horror. From that night on, she insisted that a lantern burn beside her bed at all hours, a talisman against darkness of all kinds. It didn’t help.”
― A.J. Hartley