Top 180 M.L. Rio Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Per aspera ad astra. I’d heard a variety of translations, but the one I liked best was Through the thorns, to the stars.”

— M.L. Rio

2. “How tremendous the agony of unmade decisions.”

— M.L. Rio

3. “You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”

— M.L. Rio

4. “Hatred is the sincerest form of flattery.”

— M.L. Rio

5. “I don’t know, it’s like I look at you and suddenly the sonnets makes sense. The good ones, anyway.”

— M.L. Rio

6. “My heart feels heavy in my chest. Secrets carry weight, like lead.”

— M.L. Rio

7. “Something changed irrevocably, in those few dark minutes James was submerged, as if the lack of oxygen had caused all our molecules to rearrange.”

— M.L. Rio

8. “For someone who loved words as much as I did, it was amazing how often they failed me.”

— M.L. Rio

9. “You were real to me. Sometimes I thought you were the only real thing.”

— M.L. Rio

10. “There is no comfort like complicity.”

— M.L. Rio

11. “Make art, make mistakes, and have no regrets.”

— M.L. Rio

12. “It’s like I look at you and suddenly the sonnets make sense.”

— M.L. Rio

13. “Which of us could say we were more sinned against than sinning? We were so easily manipulated – confusion made a masterpiece of us.”

— M.L. Rio

14. “The real sky was enormous overhead, making our mirrors and twinkling stage lights seem ridiculous- Man’s futile attempt to imitate God.”

— M.L. Rio

15. “Whatever we did – or, more crucially, did not do – it seemed that so long as we did it together, our individual sins might be abated. There is no comfort like complicity.”

— M.L. Rio

16. “How could we explain that standing on a stage and speaking someone else’s words as if they are your own is less an act of bravery than a desperate lunge at mutual understanding?”

— M.L. Rio

17. “I never asked where he went, worried he wouldn’t ask me to follow.”

— M.L. Rio

18. “I think he was enamored with you because you were so enamored with him.”

— M.L. Rio

19. “The chariest maid is prodigal enough,” James warned, “if she unmask her beauty to the moon.”

— M.L. Rio

20. “What is more important, that Caesar is assassinated or that he is assassinated by his intimate friends?”

— M.L. Rio

21. “First, the reckoning. Then, the fall.”

— M.L. Rio

22. “One sin, I know, another doth provoke; Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke.”

— M.L. Rio

23. “Far too many times I had asked myself whether art was imitating life or if it was the other way around.”

— M.L. Rio

24. “He speaks the unspeakable. He turns grief and triumph and rapture and rage into words, into something we can understand. He renders the whole mystery of humanity comprehensible.” I stop. Shrug. “You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”

— M.L. Rio

25. “For us, everything was a performance.” A small, private smile catches me off guard and I glance down, hoping he won’t see it. “Everything poetic.”

— M.L. Rio

26. “Through the thorns, to the stars.”

— M.L. Rio

27. “He stared up at me for a moment, then lifted his head and pulled me down to meet him. It was almost a brotherly kiss, but not quite. Too fragile, too painful. Soft whispers of surprise and confusion swept through the audience. My heart throbbed, and it hurt so badly that I bit his lip. I felt his breath catch and let him go, lowered him to the floor again. Silence lingered overlong.”

— M.L. Rio

28. “It’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is, I’m in love with him still.”

— M.L. Rio

29. “I had hoped you might be my Banquo.”

— M.L. Rio

30. “Did that just happen? For God’s sake, it’s just a play.” “Well.” Frederick sighed, removed his glasses, and began to polish them on the hem of his shirt. “Duels have been fought over less.”

— M.L. Rio

31. “Outside, a perfect autumn day had lit the trees around the lake aflame.”

— M.L. Rio

32. “James is gone, and I’m sure of nothing now.”

— M.L. Rio

33. “Secrets carry weight, like lead.”

— M.L. Rio

34. “Worthy prince, I know’t.”

— M.L. Rio

35. “But in Shakespeare’s world, passion is irresistible, not embarrassing.”

— M.L. Rio

36. “So what do you do? Ignore your grief, or indulge it?”

— M.L. Rio

37. “Was I not always his right-hand man, his lieutenant? Banquo or Benvolio or Oliver – little difference.”

— M.L. Rio

38. “People always forget about Filippa,” I add. “And later they always wish they hadn’t.”

— M.L. Rio

39. “We had, like seven siblings, spent so much time together that we had seen the best and worst of one another and were unimpressed by either.”

— M.L. Rio

40. “One thing I’m sure Colborne will never understand is that I need language to live, like food – lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that, yes, there is a word for this. Someone else has felt it before.”

— M.L. Rio

41. “I seemed doomed to always play supporting roles in someone else’s story. Far too many times I had asked myself whether art was imitating life or if it was the other way around.”

— M.L. Rio

42. “We spent four years – and most of us years before that – immersed in Shakespeare. Submerged. Here we could indulge our collective obsession. We spoke it as a second language, conversed in poetry, and lost touch with reality, a little.”

— M.L. Rio

43. “The future is wide and wild and full of promise, but it is precarious, too. Seize on every opportunity that comes your way and cling to it, lest it be washed back out to sea.”

— M.L. Rio

44. “Nothing unites men like a common enemy.”

— M.L. Rio

45. “We’re only ever playing fifty percent of a character. The rest is us, and we’re afraid to show people who we really are. We’re afraid of looking foolish if we reveal the full force of our emotions.”

— M.L. Rio

46. “Would you carry my heart like a jewel in a box?” “I dunno. Would you carry my head around in a basket if I got decapitated by pirates?”

— M.L. Rio

47. “Everyone in the room was watching James – how could they not? – but I was the only one who really knew him, every inch.”

— M.L. Rio

48. “Los secretos son cargas pesadas como el plomo.”

— M.L. Rio

49. “It was just us – the seven of us and the trees and the sky and the lake and the moon and, of course, Shakespeare. He lived with us like an eighth housemate, an older, wiser friend, perpetually out of sight but never out of mind, as if he had just left the room.”

— M.L. Rio

50. “I felt her sigh, and when she breathed her sadness out, I breathed it in.”

— M.L. Rio