Tom Stoppard Quotes
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I have to go with what I do, and what I do has more to do with what people say to each other than telling a story through images. Of course, you're trying to do both. And there are some people who are brilliant at it, but I don't consider myself to be particularly good at it. My mind gets into a verbal mode.
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Save the gerund and screw the whale.
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I read for interest and enjoyment, and when I cease to enjoy it I stop.
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To be frank: the translations that often sound bad in the mouths of the actors, these have often been done by linguists.
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What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.
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Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway. Guildenstern: What? Rosencrantz: England. Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?
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Normally, even if you're on the set for 12 hours, there may be only a moment or two when you are actually useful.
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If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice.
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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.
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"The [London] Times" has published no rumours; it's only reported facts, namely that other, less responsible papers are publishing certain rumours.
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Words are sacred. If you get the right ones in the right order you can nudge the world a little.
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Back in the East you can't do much without the right papers, but with the right papers you can do anything The believe in papers. Papers are power.
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I don't think Stoppardian has a precise definition.
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It's not so much that I enjoy screenwriting, though mostly I do, but the difference is, with adaptations, somebody else has done the hard part - made up a story, provided the characters.
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Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder. In the end I gave in. That reminds me—I spotted something between her legs that made me think of you.
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It's where we're nearest to our humanness. Useless knowledge for its own sake. Useful knowledge is good, too, but it's for the faint-hearted, an elaboration of the real thing, which is only to shine some light, it doesn't matter where on what, it's the light itself, against the darkness, it's what's left of God's purpose when you take away God.
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The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
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The causes we know everything about depend on causes we know very little about, which depend on causes we know absolutely nothing about.
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From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.
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Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?
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I can put two and two together, you know. Do not think you are dealing with a man who has lost his grapes.
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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.
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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.
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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.