Tom Stoppard Quotes
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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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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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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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Theater is a recreation. It can be much more, but unless it's recreation, I don't see the point of it.
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I'm offended by things and take pathetic little stands against them.
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I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.
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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.
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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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It's no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst.
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I write fiction because it's a way of making statements I can disown.
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War is capitalism with the gloves off.
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I've never written an original piece for film; all the original things I've done are for the stage.
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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.
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We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.
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People think there's a choice between smoking and immortality, but we've all got to die of something.
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Theater is still a medium which attracts young writers. You'd think that it would be all over by now, with television and film. But it's not.
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Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef.
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I was so thrilled being a reporter, because it gave you the kind of access to people that you wouldn't ever get to meet.
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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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To say that it is without pace, point, focus, interest, drama, wit or originality is to say simply that it does not happen to be my cup of tea.
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We've traveled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.
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War is capitalism with the gloves off and many who go to war know it but they go to war because they don't want to be a hero.
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If the audience is made to do not enough work, they resent it without knowing it. Too much and they get lost. There's a perfect pace to be found. And a perfect place that is different for every line of the play.
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Since we cannot hope for order, let us withdraw with style from the chaos.