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.

More from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

• All your life you live so close to the truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.
• A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.
• By this time tomorrow we might have forgotten everything we ever knew. That's a thought, isn't it? We'd be right back where we started - improvising.
• Fear! The crack that might flood your brain with light!
• If I might make a suggestion – shut up and sit down. Stop being perverse.
• Inside where nothing shows, I am the essence of a man spinning double-headed coins, and betting against himself in private atonement for an unremembered past.