Tom Stoppard Quotes
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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.
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The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
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When people discuss his plays, he says that he feels like he's standing at customs watching an official ransack his luggage. He cheerfully declares responsibility for a play about two people, and suddenly the officer is finding all manner of exotic contraband like the nature of God and identity, and while he can't deny that they're there, he can't for the life of him remember putting them there. In the end, a play is not the product of an idea; an idea is the product of a play.
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Having translated two plays by Chekhov, and not speaking Russian myself - I cannot say one sentence. This may shock people... However, I am not shocked, as it is not hard to find out what the words mean.
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The hard part is getting to the top of page 1.
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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.
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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.
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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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If you were handed power on a plate you'd be left fighting over a plate.
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We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?
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I don't think Stoppardian has a precise definition.
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Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child
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Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight.
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I read for interest and enjoyment, and when I cease to enjoy it I stop.
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War is capitalism with the gloves off.
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The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
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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.
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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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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."
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If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice.
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Suicide is no more than a trick played on the calendar.
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We're better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it'll rain on auntie's garden party three Sundays from now.
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A writer doesn't really have much of a function on a movie set.
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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.