“You can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen--it's not gasps and blood and falling about--that isn't what makes it death. It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all--now you see him, now you don't, that's the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back--an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death.”

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard

“Sometimes I dream of revolution, a bloody coup d'etat by the second rank - troupes of actors slaughtered by their understudies, magicians sawn in half by indefatigably smiling glamour girls, cricket teams wiped out by marauding bands of twelfth men - I dream of champions chopped down by rabbit-punching sparring partners while the eternal bridesmaids turn and rape the bridegrooms over the sausage rolls and parliamentary private secretaries plant bombs in the Minister's Humber - comedians die on provincial stages, robbed of their feeds by mutely triumphant stooges - And march - an army of assistants and deputies, the seconds-in-command, the runners-up, the right-hand men - storming the palace gates wherein the second son has already mounted the throne having committed regicide with a croquet mallet - stand-ins of the world stand up!”

The Real Inspector Hound, Tom Stoppard