Real Life/Quotes

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

—Jaques, As You Like It Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166

Ah! What avails the classic bent
And what the cultured word,
Against the undoctored incident
That actually occurred?
And what is Art whereto we press
Through paint and prose and rhyme--
When Nature in her nakedness

Defeats us every time?

—Rudyard Kipling The Benefactors

"The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense."

—many people, including Tom Clancy

"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."

—Alan Moore

"Welcome to the real world, she said to me.
Condescendingly.
Take a seat.
Take your life.

Plot it out in black and white."

—John Mayer, No Such Thing

"Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?"

—Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four

"Life isn't bliss.
Life is just this:
It's living.
You gotta go on living.

So one of us is living."

—Spike, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Once More, With Feeling"

"Reality is a cruel and unintuitive place with frustrating gameplay mechanics.

(Press X to thanklessly toil your life away)"

—Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw

"Life. Loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."

—Marvin the Paranoid Android, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"I don't like the real world. I have to live there, and it sucks. It's drab, it's dingy, quality control is a fucking joke, A-cups are far too prevalent, nobody can fly and all the dinosaurs are dead!"