50 Important Quotes You Should Pay Attention to in Così

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#11: And it makes me less of a fake and you see why a woman’s heart would soften towards a man if she saw what was happening to him in shock treatment. 

• Techniques: Metatheatre, motif
• Characters: Cherry (Speaker) 
• Act 2 Scene 1

#12: I can’t stand real things. If I could put up with reality, I wouldn’t be in here. 

• Techniques: Tricolon, colloquialism, characterisation  
• Characters: Zac (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 2 Scene 1 

#13: I had a dream, Jerry, and it is fading. There would be music, music of the spheres, colourful costumes, joie de vivre, a world that was as far removed from this dressing asylum as possible. 

• Techniques: Vivid imagery, lexical chain, metaphor, contrast 
• Characters: Roy (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 2 Scene 1

#14: You’ve always mistaken lust for love. Look at this theatre, a burnt-out wreck. A bloody great hole in the ceiling. An opera with just a piano and performed by mad people. 

• Techniques: Contrast, truncated phrases, negative connotations, dramatic tension
• Characters: Lucy (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 2 Scene 2

#15: [Addressing the audience] There was no next year. This theatre mysteriously burnt down a week after the performance and Doug was the major suspect…

• Techniques: Breaking the fourth wall (Brechtian reference), prolepsis, sombre and ephemeral tone
• Characters: Lewis (Speaker)
• Act 2 Scene 5

Love and Fidelity Quotes from Così

#16: I meant about the theme. Love is not so important nowadays…Roy: [looking at Lewis as if he’s mad] 

• Techniques: Subverted archetypes, metatheatre  
• Characters: Lewis (Speaker), Roy (Stage Direction)
• Act 1 Scene 1

#17: Nick’s a friend. He has only one problem, he likes the sound of his own voice.

• Techniques: Foreshadowing, characterisation, hyperbole
• Characters: Lewis (Speaker), Nick
• Act 1 Scene 2

#18: She’s into politics. She hates talk about love. She thinks it’s icky.

• Techniques: Tricolon, characterisation, colloquialism, juxtaposition
• Characters: Lewis (Speaker), Lucy
• Act 1 Scene 3

#19: She hates me doing an opera about love and fidelity while thousands of Vietnamese are being killed by American troops.

• Techniques: Contrast, polysyndeton, metatheatre 
• Characters: Lewis (Speaker), Julie, Lucy
• Act 1 Scene 3

#20: Men are — flesh and blood. Women are flesh and blood too – that’s what the opera says, doesn’t it? Am I irritating you? 

• Techniques: Biblical allusion, epistrophe, motif
• Characters: Julie (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 1 Scene 3

#21: I’ve always thought love was being foolish and stupid…It’s not divine madness like some people think, there’s no such thing as divine madness, madness is just madness. Love is hallucinating without drugs. 

• Techniques: Tricolon, parataxis, motif, juxtaposition
• Characters: Julie (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 2 Scene 1

#22: Love is what you feel when you don’t have enough emotion left to hate. 

• Techniques: Contrast, characterisation, paradox
• Characters: Roy (Speaker)
• Act 2 Scene 1

#23: After bread, a shelter, equality, health, procreation, money comes maybe love. Love is an emotional indulgence for the privileged few.

• Techniques: Lexical chain, bleak tone, auxesis 
• Characters: Lucy (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 2 Scene 2

Power of Art Against Politics 

#24: Without this opera having been composed, there would be just a clanging, banging, a bedlam all around us. This music of the opera keeps the world in harmony.  

• Techniques: Consonance, metaphor, motif, double entendre (word ‘bedlam’) 
• Characters: Roy (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 1 Scene 1 

#25: I thought you were tougher than that. Giving in straight away does not set a good precedent.

• Techniques: Symbolism, colloquialism  
• Characters: Roy (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 1 Scene 3

#26: This theatre could have been ringing with the music of the spheres, instead of that, a dreadful silence has descended upon us.  

• Techniques: Motif, idiom (‘music of the spheres’), contrast, disappointed tone, dramatic tension
• Characters: Roy (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 1 Scene 4

#27: Comedy is better when it’s real

• Techniques: Subversion of theme, symbolism, motif 
• Characters: Ruth (Speaker), Julie, Cherry
• Act 2 Scene 1

#28: Democracy is foreign to theatre, Jerry. You and I know that, it’s just that you want to pander to the mob. 

• Techniques: Humour, metatheatre, double entendre
• Characters: Roy (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 2 Scene 1 

#29: Working with these people has changed you. We used to talk about things. Important things. Now all you can talk about is reactionary drivel like Cosi Fan Tutte. 

• Techniques: Characterisation, jargon, play-within-a-play
• Characters: Lucy (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 2 Scene 2

Quotes about the Power of Art Against Politics by Nick in Così

#30: A fuckin’ Mozart opera. Lucy can’t believe it either. I mean, I directed you in two of Brecht’s plays, didn’t you learn anything? 

• Techniques: Literary allusion (to Brecht), rhetorical question, condescending tone   
• Characters: Nick (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 1 Scene 4 

#31: Only mad people in this day and age would do a work about love and infidelity. They’re definitely mad. 

• Techniques: Hyperbole, high modality, metatheatre
• Characters: Nick (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 1 Scene 4 

#32: Christ, you’ll never be a director until you can convince them what you want to do is what they want to do. 

• Techniques: Dramatic irony, metatheatre, humour  
• Characters: Nick (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 1 Scene 4 

#33: Half the joke? A bit of a kick in the face of a poor nation struggling to feed its people, isn’t it? Here we are, supporting the Viet Cong and you’re laughing at their supporters, the Albanians.

• Techniques: Dramatic tension, aggressive tone 
• Characters: Nick (Speaker), Lewis, Henry 
• Act 1 Scene 4

Così Quotes about Mental Illness 

#34: The thing is, and you’ll discover this, is that they are just normal people, well, not normal, or else they wouldn’t be in here, would they?

• Techniques: Lexical choice (‘normal’), patronising and matter-of-fact tone, rhetorical question
• Characters: Justin (Speaker), Lewis 
• Act 1 Scene 1

#35: They are normal people who have done extraordinary things, thought extraordinary things. You are getting a good bunch. They’ll be no real trouble.

• Techniques: Contrast, lexical choice (‘good bunch’, ‘trouble’), characterisation
• Characters: Justin (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 1 Scene 1

#36: This experiment was to bring them out of their shells, not to allow them to wreak havoc. 

• Techniques: Objectifying lexical choice (‘experiment’), contrast, dramatic irony 
• Characters: Justin (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 1 Scene 3

#37: Don’t tell a psychiatrist that story, they’d have a heart attack on the symbolism of it all.

• Techniques: Humour, cynical tone, hyperbole  
• Characters: Julie (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 1 Scene 3

#38: Should I take six or seven steps? 

• Techniques: Recurring joke, characterisation, obsessive tone  
• Characters: Ruth (Speaker), Nick  
• Act 1 Scene 4

#39: A lower dosage. It’s amazing how much more bright the world seems. 

• Techniques: Pathos, motif  
• Characters: Zac (Speaker)
• Act 2 Scene 1 

#40: I like the dark. That’s what I hate about the wards – they’re never really totally dark, there’s always a light on in the corridor or whatever. Never true pitch black. 

• Techniques: Symbolism, subversion, setting 
• Characters: Julie (Speaker)
• Act 2 Scene 1 

#41: You have become a right-wing nut, haven’t you? You belong here. 

• Techniques: Slang, aggressive tone, aporia
• Characters: Nick (Speaker), Lewis
• Act 2 Scene 3

Quotes by Roy about Mental Illness in Così

#42: Do you think they’ll get the idea that the toy soldiers symbolise real soldiers? 

• Techniques: Humour, metatheatre 
• Characters: Roy (Speaker), Henry, Lewis
• Act 2 Scene 1

#43: [Zac enters looking soporific]…How much Lithium is the poor bugger on?

• Techniques: Pathos, characterisation, metonym 
• Characters: Roy (Speaker), Zac
• Act 1 Scene 1

#44: Where’s the piano? Asylums are the most inefficient places on this earth. 

• Techniques: Setting, symbolism, metaphor 
• Characters: Roy (Speaker), Doug
• Act 1 Scene 1

Gender Divisions 

#45: Men want women to deceive them because it’ll prove their worst thoughts about women.

• Techniques: Juxtaposition, superlative, subversive voice
• Characters: Julie (Speaker)
• Act 1 Scene 3 

#46: This Cosi condones the cccorruption of innocence. Women are told to be tramps. Free love. Women are not to be trusted. 

• Techniques: Tricolon, consonance, biblical reference 
• Characters: Henry (Speaker)
• Act 1 Scene 4

#47: I cried for days. He just wanted me for sex. Men like sex more than women because they don’t have to clean up the mess. 

• Techniques: Anecdote, metaphor, double entendre 
• Characters: Ruth (Speaker), Lewis 
• Act 2 Scene 1 

#48: What would you do, Lewis? Would you hit him? Like Dorabella and Fiordiligi, it’s just as easy for a woman to fall in love as it is for a man. 

• Techniques: Contrast, play-within-a-play
• Characters: Julie (Speaker), Lewis 
• Act 2 Scene 1

#49: Well you’re not an Arabian phoenix, are you?…No, I’m a woman. Ever heard of a man who is faithful?

• Techniques: Metaphor, realistic tone, dramatic tension, rhetorical question 
• Characters: Lewis (Speaker), Lucy (Speaker)
• Act 2 Scene 2 

#50: This is the man who deceived us… [Cherry runs to the side of the stage and grabs giant cards on which the lyrics of the final song are written in English]

• Techniques: Use of signs (Brechtian technique), metatheatre, subversion of theme  
• Characters: Lewis (Speaker), Lucy (Speaker)
• Act 2 Scene 4