Tom Stoppard Quotes
-
We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?
-
Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it.
-
I smoke too much whether it's going well or badly. After all these years, I definitely associate having a pen in my hand with having an ashtray just out of eye line.
-
How the hell do I know what I find incredible? Credibility is an expanding field... Sheer disbelief hardly registers on the face before the head is nodding with all the wisdom of instant hindsight.
-
Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat’s last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x, y and z are whole numbers each raised to power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2.
-
The hard part is getting to the top of page 1.
-
Rewriting isn't just about dialogue, it's the order of the scenes, how you finish a scene, how you get into a scene. All these final decisions are best made when you're there, watching. It's really enjoyable, but you've got to be there at the director's invitation. You can't just barge in and say, "I'm the writer."
-
I read for interest and enjoyment, and when I cease to enjoy it I stop.
-
The names for things don't come first. Words stagger after, hopelessly trying to become the sensation.
-
Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light.
-
The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
-
The universe is deterministic all right, just like Newton said, I mean it's trying to be, but the only thing going wrong is people fancying people who aren't supposed to be in that part of the plan.
-
I don't think Stoppardian has a precise definition.
-
I don't keep a diary and I throw away nearly all the paper I might have kept. I don't keep an archive. There's something worrying about my make-up that I try to leave no trace of myself apart from my plays.
-
Death followed by eternity the worst of both worlds. It is a terrible thought.
-
We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.
-
Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight. Equilibrium is pragmatic. You have to get everything into proportion. You compensate, rebalance yourself so that you maintain your angle to your world. When the world shifts, you shift.
-
Traitors hoist by their own petard?--or victims of the gods?--we shall never know!
-
Suicide is no more than a trick played on the calendar.
-
If you were handed power on a plate you'd be left fighting over a plate.
-
If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice.
-
From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.
-
Theater is a recreation. It can be much more, but unless it's recreation, I don't see the point of it.
-
The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.