Tom Stoppard Quotes
The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about—clouds—daffodils—waterfalls—what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in—these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks.
Quotes to Explore
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I think the music I've created is quite odd, and people are going to start talking about that.
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I don't know how many people have ever seen the National Guard break in somewhere, but they mean business.
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People are like, 'Was it hard growing up mixed?' 'Did you not fit in?' and I'm like, 'No? What? That's the dumbest question ever.'
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Some people's personalities are so compelling that they command attention.
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It can be frustrating when you're put in a category with others. Women do get lumped together in this reductive grouping, and you think, 'Gosh, that rarely happens with the boys.' I'm sure people don't say to Eddie Redmayne, 'How do you feel about Andrew Garfield?'
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I think culture precedes politics, and I think the attempts to try and legislate people's behavior... isn't going to be productive until the culture decides what they want to achieve.
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Writers always have confidence issues - it comes with the territory. We never know where we fit in, or what the actual value of our work might be. So we hit lulls, or slogs. Throw in the idea that many creative people are somewhat manic-depressive, and it can get pretty dark at times.
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I was trying to be someone for the first part of high school. I was kind of this nerdy kid who didn't want to be a nerd anymore. Even talking about it, I'm embarrassed. I'm like, 'Ugh, why did you care what people thought?'
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Crazy old people are our entire source of polling information.
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People often ask me why I don't take up more heroine-oriented roles. My question is, 'Where are these roles?' I really appreciate actresses who sign only films with meaty roles. However, there aren't too many of them. The industry is simply male-dominated.
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I want to work with different people, and I would like to work in different places.
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I think people underestimate the importance of lighting - layers of lighting, not just one light. I do a lighting seminar where I take a $300-a-yard fabric and a $3-a-yard fabric. I show what lighting can do to either one.
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Who is that person that comes around and says, 'You are OK, you are worthy, you are special?' That makes all the difference in the world for many of us. Those are the people we appreciate the most.
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I have some friends, and they're super-hipster. And they're like, 'All I wanna do is sing in a jazz bar and to just make it to pay for the rent.' And I'm like, 'Cool... That's not what I wanna do. I want as many people as possible to go to my concert.'
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The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the United States reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.
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My music has a high irritation factor. I've always tried to say something. Eccentric lyrics about eccentric people. Often it was a joke. But I would plead guilty on the grounds that I prefer eccentricity to the bland.
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I pick up on other people's discomfort.
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The big businesses are less willing to take risks. I talked to some young people in Hong Kong, and they said they are lost. Young people indeed have fewer opportunities than before. But is it true that there are no more opportunities for them? No!
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Listen - of course money changes everything, but so does sunlight, and so does food: These are powerful but neutral energy sources, neither inherently good nor evil but shaped only by the way we use them.
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I grew up in a very British family who had been transplanted to Canada, and my grandmother's house was filled with English books. I was a very early reader, so I was really brought up being surrounded with piles of British books and British newspapers, British magazines. I developed a really great love of England.
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There's no book that absolutely everyone loves.
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Everything is produced by the workers, and the minute they try to get something by their unions they meet all the opposition that can be mustered by those who now get what they produce.
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We call it the zigzag theory. You want to find something that zigs and something that zags and blend them together to get a better combined performance.
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The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about—clouds—daffodils—waterfalls—what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in—these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks.
