Tom Stoppard Quotes
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What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.
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You can persuade a man to believe almost anything provided he is clever enough, but it is much more difficult to persuade someone less clever.
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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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If knowledge isn't self-knowledge it isn't doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing 'When Father Painted the Parlour'? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. 'She walks into beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.
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Once rehearsals are done the writer really doesn't have a function on the set. If the script is stabilized, then the writer becomes a celebrity tourist visiting the set, trying not to get in the way. It's very good for the ego, to go visit a film set if you are the writer, because they give you a special chair, and tell you where you can sit to watch the monitor. They make you feel special, but at the same time, they make it perfectly plain that you are irrelevant!
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I think that the present is worth attention, one shouldn't sacrifice it to future conceptions of, of this future or that future.
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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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I write fiction because it's a way of making statements I can disown.
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Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light.
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The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
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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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It's no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst.
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Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight.
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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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Childhood is Last Chance Gulch for happiness. After that, you know too much.
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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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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.
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A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.
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We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.
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Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?
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Suicide is no more than a trick played on the calendar.
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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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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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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.