Tom Stoppard Quotes
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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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Save the gerund and screw the whale.
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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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The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
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Pirates could happen to anyone.
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It's no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst.
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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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Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight.
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I write fiction because it's a way of making statements I can disown.
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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 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 media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
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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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Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light.
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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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Childhood is Last Chance Gulch for happiness. After that, you know too much.
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The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.
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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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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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We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.
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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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Obviously, you would give your life for your children, or give them the last biscuit on the plate. But to me, the trick in life is to take that sense of generosity between kin, make it apply to the extended family and to your neighbour, your village and beyond.
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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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Suicide is no more than a trick played on the calendar.