Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead quotes

View Quote Guildenstern: Who are we that so much should converge on our little deaths?
The Player: You are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That's enough.

View Quote Guildenstern: A man, breaking his journey between one place and another, at a third place of no name, character, population, or significance sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for this sort of mystical encounter, or rather, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy, until – "My god!" shouts a second man, "I must be dreaming! I thought I just saw a unicorn!" At which point a dimension is added which makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no new dimension, only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are, the thinner it spreads and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality – the name we give to the common experience. "Look! Look!" recites the crowd. "A horse, with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer!"
Rosencrantz: I knew all along it was a band.
Guildenstern: He knew all along it was a band.
Rosencrantz: And here they come!
Guildenstern: I'm sorry it wasn't a unicorn. It would have been nice to have unicorns.

View Quote Guildenstern: The law of probabilities states that if six monkeys were … if six monkeys were …
Rosencrantz: Game?
Guildenstern: Were they?
Rosencrantz: Are you?
Guildenstern: Game. The law of probabilities states that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air for long enough, they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their …
Rosencrantz: Heads.
Guildenstern: Which even at first glance doesn't strike one as a particularly rewarding speculation in either sense … even without the monkeys. I mean, you wouldn't bet on it. I mean, I would, but you wouldn't.