Tom Stoppard Quotes
Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.
Quotes to Explore
-
Look at how hard it was to get to where I am. It doesn't make sense to give it up.
-
I am a massive fan of early electronica like Steve Reich, Pat Metheny and Thomas Dolby. I used to be a big raver, too, so anything dance. I love ambient music like Tunng. I love acoustic and classical, too.
-
The director had come to Madrid to court me.
-
I went to Antarctica on a science research boat just to sort of clear my head.
-
My advice would be to follow your dream. Most of my life, I was in second place before I came in first place. I hope that inspired people to never give up.
-
Being an actor means asking people to look at you. I guess I accept that. But it's a profession in which the job is to show another world and other people. You may access it through bits of yourself, and your imagination and experience, but actually, in the end, you're not playing yourself.
-
Religious fundamentalists in Bangladesh have always argued for a ban on my books.
-
I do two months of strict dieting, so after fight night, I go for whatever my body is craving. It's usually sushi. But after that, I go home to Guadalajara and indulge in a lot of tacos before I have to start getting in shape for another fight.
-
Many African-American men are incarcerated. And so African-American women do carry an enormous burden. And traditionally have carried a greater burden than perhaps their white counterparts.
-
There's no smarter politician out there than Bill Clinton.
-
I find it hard to focus looking forward. So I look backward.
-
We may define therapy as a search for value.
-
For the first time in the history of Bihar, I provided a stable government. Despite being denied funds by the Centre, Bihar survived on its resources. I provided pucca dwellings to half a million Dalit families.
-
Being outside is a loose theme on 'Paracosm.' Acoustic-sounding instruments have that warmth to them that is really important to communicate. It was really important for me to tell a story – my favorite records have a narrative feel.
-
Movies don't have borders.
-
When we went into World War II, I was a tractor driver then. I drove tractors on the plantation. So when they start calling people my age, 18, up, I was one they called.
-
The very best testament to the validity of the Warren Commission's findings is that after an unrelenting, close to forty-five-year effort, the Commission's fiercest critics have not been able to produce any new credible evidence that would in any way justify a different conclusion.
-
I know something quite sure. We'll never have peace with this Syrian regime. They'll never give us relief, and we'll never forget that.
-
On the other hand, when I give it closer thought, I realize I'm not enough of a dictator to conduct an orchestra because it requires a pretty awful person. When you read these biographies of famous conductors, they are all awful people who fail in their private relationships.
-
What's risky is living your life and never trying for anything and never doing something brave and never getting yourself scared.
-
When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice.
-
Our military has to be strengthened. Our vets have to be taken care of. We have to end Obamacare, and we have to make our country great again, and I will do that.
-
And so they are ever returning to us, the dead. At times they come back from the ice more than seven decades later and are found at the edge of the moraine, a few polished bones and a pair of hobnailed boots.
-
Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.
