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War is capitalism with the gloves off.
Tom Stoppard -
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.
Tom Stoppard
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From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.
Tom Stoppard -
Fatherlessness didn't strike me as being an event. It was a state of life.
Tom Stoppard -
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.
Tom Stoppard -
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.
Tom Stoppard -
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.
Tom Stoppard -
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."
Tom Stoppard
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It seems pointless to be quoted if one isn't going to be quotable ... it's better to be quotable than honest.
Tom Stoppard -
We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?
Tom Stoppard -
My scripts are possibly too talkative.
Tom Stoppard -
Death followed by eternity the worst of both worlds. It is a terrible thought.
Tom Stoppard -
A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.
Tom Stoppard -
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.
Tom Stoppard
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The trouble is, I can't find a part of myself where you're not important. I write in order to be worth your while and to finance the way I want to live with you. Not the way you want to live. The way I want to live with you. Without you I wouldn't care. I'd eat tinned spaghetti and put on yesterday's clothes. But as it is I change my socks, and make money, and tart up Brodie's unspeakable drivel into speakable drivel so he can be an author too, like me.
Tom Stoppard -
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.
Tom Stoppard -
I didn't feel good about cutting out parts of very famous speeches, ... You think you somehow need all of it or you get none of it, but that's not true.
Tom Stoppard -
You think human nature is a beast, that it must be put in a cage. But it's the cage that makes the animal bad.
Tom Stoppard -
I don't really have a system or set of principles. It's kind of common sense mixed up with instinct.
Tom Stoppard -
Theater is a recreation. It can be much more, but unless it's recreation, I don't see the point of it.
Tom Stoppard
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ROS: Why don't you go and have a look? GUIL: Pragmatism?! - is that all you have to offer?
Tom Stoppard -
Writing a play is like smashing that [glass] ashtray, filming it in slow motion, and then running the film in reverse, so that the fragments of rubble appear to fly together. You start - or at least I start - with the rubble.
Tom Stoppard -
Fantasy flows in where fact leaves a vacuum.
Tom Stoppard -
Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef.
Tom Stoppard