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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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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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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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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Pirates could happen to anyone.
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I know the British press is very attached to the lobby system. It lets the journalists and the politicians feel proud of their traditional freedoms while giving the reader as much of the truth as they think is good for him.
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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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Since we cannot hope for order, let us withdraw with style from the chaos.
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If you were handed power on a plate you'd be left fighting over a plate.
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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 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'm offended by things and take pathetic little stands against them.
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Fatherlessness didn't strike me as being an event. It was a state of life.
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Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef.
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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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Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.
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Traitors hoist by their own petard?--or victims of the gods?--we shall never know!
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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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Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can't think of anything more trivial than quarks, quasars, big bangs and black holes.
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Junk journalism is the evidence of a society that has got at least one thing right, that there should be nobody with the power to dictate where responsible journalism begins.
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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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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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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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Death followed by eternity the worst of both worlds. It is a terrible thought.