80 Quotes by Mark Rylance

There were terrific shows on TV like 'Star Trek' and 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' and 'Wild Wild West.' All us kids would watch them. We would act them out in the basement. I think I found that I could speak a bit more clearly when I was playing with other people.

A lot of actors, you can't get them to shut up. Instead of listening and watching, they're always telling you something.

We have people we admire, like Einstein, saying mystery is the most beautiful thing a human being can experience. Yet, everywhere in our culture, everything that is truly mysterious is immediately dismissed.

In a way, I think science is the modern religion, and at times, I despise it as much as I despise other religions because it really will only accept stuff that fits its masculine ability to define the world.

I just absolutely needed the theatre so desperately - it was my fate; it was where I was running towards. It was the place where I found peace and survival and all kinds of things.

I think, early on, I was very distrustful of authority yet needed a lot of approval from it. I was in that kind of bind. Which is a kind of abuse bind.

Shakespeare was the main thing I did in my life from the age of 16 when I first played 'Hamlet' at school. I then did summer stock the next summer and then went to RADA and joined the RSC and ran my own company and then worked at the Globe. That was about 30 years of my life.

The publicity machine for films and television is so much bigger than for theatre.

It's amazing how much the sense of telling a story with a beginning, middle, and end helps me to relax. I find that the mass of stories that one is subjected to living one's life is otherwise overwhelming.