Tom Stoppard Quotes
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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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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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Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight.
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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'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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Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.
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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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Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light.
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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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Act first! The ideas will follow, and if not - well, it's progress
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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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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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Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?
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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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I'm offended by things and take pathetic little stands against them.
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If you want to change something by Tuesday, theater is no good. Journalism is what does that. But, if you want to just alter the chemistry of the moral matrix, then theater has a longer half-life.
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I write for film or, in this case, television when I haven't got a play cooking.
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I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.
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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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Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat? Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat. Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats. Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.
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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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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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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.