The Libertine, by Stephen Jeffreys

Allow me to be frank at the commencement. You will not like me. The gentlemen will be envious and the ladies will be repelled. You will not like me now and you will like me a good deal less as we go on. Ladies, an announcement: I am up for it, all the time. That is not a boast or an opinion, it is bone hard medical fact. I put it round you know. And you will watch me putting it round and sigh for it. Don't. It is a deal of trouble for you and you are better off watching and drawing your conclusions from a distance than you would be if I got my tarse up your petticoats. Gentlemen. Do not despair, I am up for that as well. And the same warning applies. Still your cheesy erections till I have had my say. But later when you shag - and later you will shag, I shall expect it of you and I will know if you have let me down - I wish you to shag with my homuncular image rattling in your gonads. Feel how it was for me, how it is for me and ponder. 'Was that shudder the same shudder he sensed? Did he know something more profound? Or is there some wall of wretchedness that we all batter with our heads at that shining, livelong moment. That is it. That is my prologue, nothing in rhyme, no protestations of modesty, you were not expecting that I hope. I am John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester and I do not want you to like me.

  -- Opening line from  The Libertine, by Stephen Jeffreys

Waiting for Godot, Act 1, beginning and end. Samuel Beckett

A country road. A tree.


Evening.

...

ESTRAGON:
Well, shall we go?

VLADIMIR:
Yes, let's go.
They do not move.

Curtain.

~ Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, Act 1. Opening and closing lines of script.

J.B., Archibald MacLeish

We can never know
He answered me like the stillness of a star
That silences us asking

We are and that is all our answer
We are and what we are can suffer
But...
                      what suffers loves.
                                    

 And love
Will live its suffering again,
Risk its own defeat again,
Endure the loss of everything again
And yet again and yet again
In doubt, in dread, in ignorance, unanswered,
Over and over, with the dark before,
The dark behind it... and still live... still love

- J.B., Archibald MacLeish