Do you want to play questions? How do you play that? You have to ask questions. Statement. One - Love. Cheating. How? I haven't started yet. Statement. Two - Love. Are you counting that? What? Are you counting that? Foul. No repetition. Three - Love and game. I'm not going to play if you're going to be like that. Who's serve? Uh... Hesitation. Love - One. Who's go? Why? Why not? What for? Ha. No synonyms. One all. What in God's name is going on? Foul. No rhetoric. Two - One. What does it all add up to? Can't you guess? Are you addressing me? Is there anyone else? Who? How would I know? Why do you ask? Are you serious? Was that rhetoric? No. Statement. Two all. Game point. What's the matter with you today? When? What? Are you deaf? Am I dead? Yes or no? Is there a choice? Is there a God? Foul. No non-sequiturs. Three - Two. One game all. What's your name? What's yours? You first. Statement. One - Love. What's your name when you're at home? What's yours? When I'm at home? Is it different at home? What home? Haven't you got one? Why do you ask? What are you driving at? What's your name? Repetition. Two - Love. Match point. Who do you think you are? Rhetoric. Game and match! * * * Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where is it going to end? * * * A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself. * * * A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him, in his two-fold security. * * * The law of averages, if I've got this right, means that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air long enough, they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their -- Heads. * * * The old man thinks he's in love with his daughter. Good God! We're out of our depths here. No, no, no. He hasn't got a daughter. The old man thinks he's in love with his daughter. The old man is? Hamlet...in love...with the old man's daughter...the old man thinks. Oh. It's beginning to make sense. * * * Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. Must have been shattering, steeped into one's memory. And yet, I can't remember it. * * * What a shambles! We're just not getting anywhere. Not even England. I don't believe in it anyway. What? England. Just a conspiracy of cartographers, you mean? * * * We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat? No, no, no...Death is.... not. Death isn't. You take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on boats. I've frequently not been on boats. No, no, no- what you've been is not on boats. * * * Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it? No. Nor do I, really....It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean one thinks of it like being alive in a box, one keeps forgetting to take into account that fact that one is dead...which should make all the difference...shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never know you were in a box, would you? It would be just like being asleep in a box. Not that I'd like to sleep in a box, mind you, not without any air--you'd wake up dead, for a start, and then where would you be? Apart from inside a box. That's the bit I don't like, frankly. That's why I don't think of it.... Because you'd be helpless, wouldn't you? Stuffed in a box like that, I mean you'd be in there for ever. Even taking into account that fact that you're dead, it isn't a pleasant thought. Especially if you're dead, really...ask yourself, if I asked you straight off--I'm going to stuff you in this box now, would you rather be alive or dead? Naturally, you'd prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all. I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking--well, at least I'm not dead! In a minute someone's going to bang on the lid and tell me to come out. (Banging the floor with his fists.) "Hey you, whatsyername! Come out of there!" * * * We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that our eyes once watered. * * *