FastSaying

Directors sometimes have good ideas that I wished I'd had, not on rewriting but simply on staging.


Tom Stoppard

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ADAM SAVAGE But I'm a big believer that government does not have a monopoly on good ideas.
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GARY F EVANS... I can say yes to some directors without even reading a script. But the first-time directors I've...
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JOHN SHELTON REED 'Ice Age' felt like stage acting. You'd write a sequence, and sometimes you'd submit...
JASON FUCHS It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.... A door like this has ...
TOM STOPPARD Let me get it straight. Your father was king. You were his only son. Your father dies. You are of ag...
TOM STOPPARD I told Tom that if I was a coach, that?s who I?d want on the field, ... I had all the confidence in ...
BEN ROETHLISBERGER College had little effect on me. I'd have been the same writer if I'd gone to MIT, except I&...
ROBERT B. PARKER I had just had small parts in other films, and I'd worked with a lot of directors in TV.
SALLY KELLERMAN We never had a trampoline, but I wished I did. We'd sneak into a friend's pool and use their...
REY MYSTERIO I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the first book had not sold... doesn't bear think...
BERNARD CORNWELL Back 12 years ago, when Dr. Mathews was president here, we had a plan that when I got ready to quit,...
BEAR BRYANT I'd really been interested in opera when I was about 16, and I really like staging them.
BRUCE BERESFORD I always had a trunk full of good reviews. I'd get magnificent reviews, and I'd be standing ...
DIANE LADD I, a singular proper noun, would go on, if always in a conditional tense.
JOHN GREEN I think some people wished I'd kept myself out of the book. But I kind of insist on it because I...
HELEN GARNER I've had really great experiences working with first-time directors. They come at filmmaking wit...
JEFF BRIDGES I don't think that the Left has a monopoly on bad ideas. I don't think the Right has a monop...
J. D. VANCE To begin with, I had never done any good deeds; besides, even if I had simply fabricated a few, I wo...
M. AGEYEV Radio used to be dominated by Tom Petty and artists like that. If Tom Petty came out today, he'd...
CHARLES KELLEY When you realize that the uncut 'Porgy and Bess' started me off, that I'd have the oppor...
JACK O'BRIEN Oh, I do a tremendous amount of rewriting. I just obsessively rewrite. Although sometimes there are ...
ELIZABETH STROUT All last year we tried to teach him English, and the only word he learned was million.
, ON PITCHER FERNANDO VALENZUELA I owe a lot to my time on 'House of Cards' because, up until I booked that show, I had been ...
MAHERSHALA ALI I never thought I'd go on a show like 'The X Factor,' simply because I didn't have e...
ELLA HENDERSON I've definitely had ideas and plans that sometimes exceed my means and capabilities.
EMILE HIRSCH Sometimes I'd hear things on other people's records and I say I wanted it on my records, but...
DESMOND DEKKER Sometimes I call directors. Sometimes I just meet with them. It just happens. It's not that I...
JULIETTE BINOCHE I'd love to work with Tom Cruise.
BILLY UNGER I don't have big ideas. I sometimes have small ideas, which seem to work out.
MATT MULLENWEG Rewriting to me means, if I work on it for three days, I've rewritten it.
JULES SHEAR There are players there that you wished you could have on your squad. . . . I had some tough convers...
JOE GIBBS I said that I like to write on trains and that I wished Amtrak had residencies for writers.
ALEXANDER CHEE Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a ...
TOM STOPPARD I want to pick good projects, I want to work with great directors and try not to put too much pressu...
RACHEL MCADAMS I think three or four years ago, people would have said my biggest weakness was that sometimes I was...
ED BALLS If I'd had good discipline, I might have gone into music.
CLINT EASTWOOD If we had a starting XI that no one could argue about it wouldn't say a lot for English football...
RIO FERDINAND My mother, she had a very good attitude toward money. I'm very grateful for the fact that we had...
GEMMA ARTERTON Sometimes I wish I had a terrible childhood, so that at least I´d have an excuse.
JIMMY FALLON Sometimes I wish I had a terrible childhood, so that at least I´d have an excuse.
JIMMY FALLON I'd like not to have these great puffy lobes on my ears - I'd like them to taper in.
NICHOLAS HASLAM If I have any justification for having lived it's simply, I'm nothing but faults, failures a...
ARTHUR MILLER I have great ideas, but the follow through is always really difficult for me. As my kid gets a littl...
BUSY PHILIPPS I would love to be on 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.' I'd love to be on that. A lot of my favori...
MATTHEW GRAY GUBLER When I'm shooting on location, you get ideas on the spot - new angles. You make not major change...
SATYAJIT RAY If I'm uncomfortable on stage, everybody can see it. I'm not very good at hiding it. I like ...
LAURA MVULA People would ask me to autograph their bodies and then the next time I'd see them on tour they&#...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK I had thought of writing, actually, and that later on I'd be a novelist.
FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT You see, I'd not a very good place here; the fellows looked on me as a sort of special object of...
RICHARD H. DAVIS If I had a choice, I'd rather be admired less and have my husband tormented less. I'd prefer...
PAT NIXON Growing up, if I hadn't had sports, I don't know where I'd be. God only knows what stree...
BOBBY ORR Austin always had that dumb old hat on. I always wished he'd get a new one, but he kept the old one....
LEAH CHASE In the life of any actor or actress, there is inevitably a time when they will be eligible to act in...
ED STOPPARD I'd prefer to be good, but I'm not always. I struggle.
LAURA MARLING I thought what I was good at doing was playing real simple guitar licks, since I'd cut my teeth ...
JOHN FOGERTY I felt fine, ... I wanted to take all of the snaps, but [coach Tom Coughlin] took me out and I don't...
NEW YORK GIANTS I felt fine, ... I wanted to take all of the snaps, but (coach Tom Coughlin) took me out and I don't...
NEW YORK GIANTS I just tend to do things to myself that I don't realize I'm doing. Sometimes I bite my lip s...
FIONA APPLE I'd love to see more women working as directors and producers.
IDA LUPINO You can sit around and complain that Hollywood doesn't make any good movies. But you can generat...
KEVIN BACON I never want to make a film. I don't wake up in the morning going, 'Ooh, I'd really love...
STEPHEN DALDRY I internalize a lot of thoughts, and sometimes it seems like I'm not listening or totally zoned ...
MAREN MORRIS I do watch 'American Idol' sometimes. It's not really that pleasurable... I take that ba...
M. WARD In 'Huckleberry Finn,' I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwa...
MARK TWAIN I'm quite bullish. We're coming up on year 15 of a flat stock market. Historically that'...
MARC ANDREESSEN When I was on the '70s Show,' I had that and I had 'Punk'd' and I had my own pro...
ASHTON KUTCHER I am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wishe...
WOLE SOYINKA Obviously I'd love to have kids and all that. Luckily, as a man, there's not such an egg tim...
TOM HOLLANDER According to the papers, I'm miserable, alienated, and on the brink of resignation. But that'...
VINCE CABLE It's our fault. We should have given him better parts.
, ON HEARING THAT RONALD REAGAN HAD BEEN ELECTED GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA Sometimes, I wish we were all amateurs again. I'd play for nothing. Ab-so-lute-ly free. But that...
DAN MARINO I used to say, 'Man, I think I'd be a really good dad. I'll be a great provider. I'm...
ELIZABETH GILBERT I've been on 'Jay Leno,' and everyone likes Jay, but being on that show is a really bori...
HENRY ROLLINS Definitely scatterbrained. I internalize a lot of thoughts, and sometimes it seems like I'm not ...
MAREN MORRIS I think I'd have done better if I had been a little more relaxed-if I had not pressed quite so h...
CHARLES KURALT I'd love to maybe try writing. I don't know if I'd publish anything, but as a hobby, it&...
EMMA ROBERTS I studied philosophy, religious studies, and English. My training was writing four full-length novel...
TED DEKKER If you're doing something like 'Arcadia' by Tom Stoppard, which has been done millions a...
BEL POWLEY I'd love to do a romantic comedy. And perhaps, if the character was right and I had a good gut i...
ARCHIE PANJABI Once I'm given an idea for a story I have a million ideas on how it should be illustrated, but I...
BRIAN SELZNICK I don't plan, because everything goes against my plans anyways. There's absolutely no point ...
TENA DESAE Victor Mature was a big man; he had a great swagger. I liked him and I knew we'd be good togethe...
ESTHER WILLIAMS If I had been on 'Bowling for Dollars', I'd wind up owing them money.
RICKI LAKE I think the idea of having the show divided into two parts was that Tom Tom Club opened for Talking ...
TINA WEYMOUTH I want to work with great directors. I've picked films based on the script or the character and ...
AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON In films, I didn't crave the type of attention I had sort of stumbled into in my music career. A...
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE Directors' fiduciary duties require significant time. It's not simply putting it on your résumé an...
ANN YERGER Directors' fiduciary duties require significant time. It's not simply putting it on your résumé an...
ANN YERGER I think that perhaps if I had had to slow down the ideas so that I could capture them on paper I mig...
J.K. ROWLING When I think back on it, of course I got lucky and got great directors and good breaks but all that ...
SHAH RUKH KHAN I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY On that show, I did country and some rock, too, whatever record I had out at the time, I'd sing ...
WANDA JACKSON If I were on the field, I'd want the manager sticking up for me. Sometimes players are dead wron...
BOBBY COX

More Tom Stoppard

Good things, when short, are twice as good.
TOM STOPPARD Time is short, life is short, there's a lot to know. So I skip the entertainers in the newspaper...
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TOM STOPPARD I'm offended by things and take pathetic little stands against them.
TOM STOPPARD My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.
TOM STOPPARD The text loses its virginity simply by being staged: it's no longer the abstract ideal version; ...
TOM STOPPARD I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones...
TOM STOPPARD Any revival in which I am involved is liable to change.
TOM STOPPARD Hotel rooms inhabit a separate moral universe.
TOM STOPPARD All your life, you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. An...
TOM STOPPARD Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
TOM STOPPARD The whole philosophy of modern times is to dissolve distinctions between individuals and deal with t...
TOM STOPPARD For me, human rights simply endorse a view of life and a set of moral values that are perfectly clea...
TOM STOPPARD Every exit is an entry somewhere else.
TOM STOPPARD It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
TOM STOPPARD Obviously, you would give your life for your children, or give them the last biscuit on the plate. B...
TOM STOPPARD From as long as, literally as far back as I can remember I've liked puns, word jokes, I can lite...
TOM STOPPARD I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term w...
TOM STOPPARD A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.
TOM STOPPARD When I was 20, in 1957, and maybe you would say I was old enough to know better, but nevertheless, I...
TOM STOPPARD We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.
TOM STOPPARD The notion that the 'leader' has the right to ask huge sacrifices of your generation for a n...
TOM STOPPARD When I was a reporter in Bristol, which I was between the years 1954 and 1960, the newspaper would g...
TOM STOPPARD In January 1962, when I was the author of one and a half unperformed plays, I attended a student pro...
TOM STOPPARD Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it were a bet, you would not take it.
TOM STOPPARD My family was in Singapore when the Japanese War started. We were in Singapore at the time of Pearl ...
TOM STOPPARD It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing.
TOM STOPPARD Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?
TOM STOPPARD My brain cells are dying in their trillions.
TOM STOPPARD Age is a high price to pay for maturity.
TOM STOPPARD In Chekhov, everything blends into its opposite, just fractionally, and this is sort of unsettling. ...
TOM STOPPARD It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
TOM STOPPARD Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
TOM STOPPARD Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.
TOM STOPPARD The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
TOM STOPPARD Every exit is an entry somewhere.
TOM STOPPARD I don't think I can be expected to take seriously any game which takes less than three days to reach...
TOM STOPPARD Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picni...
TOM STOPPARD We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our prog...
TOM STOPPARD We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the r...
TOM STOPPARD Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.
TOM STOPPARD It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
TOM STOPPARD If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.
TOM STOPPARD Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.
TOM STOPPARD From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.
TOM STOPPARD I am not my body. My body is nothing without me.
TOM STOPPARD If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice.
TOM STOPPARD A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it...
TOM STOPPARD In 2005, I got an email from Belarus Free Theatre. They were emailing playwrights in America and Eng...
TOM STOPPARD A 'human right' is, by definition, timeless. It cannot adhere to some societies and not othe...
TOM STOPPARD I feel that when I began writing, I had a need to know more about the play before I got into it. I t...
TOM STOPPARD My intention still is to write a play to commemorate, possibly rather skeptically, the 50th annivers...
TOM STOPPARD I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put ...
TOM STOPPARD Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up.
TOM STOPPARD A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
TOM STOPPARD People have quite a simple idea about 'Anna Karenina.' They feel that the novel is entirely ...
TOM STOPPARD I have about a dozen cassettes lying about which I use in random order. Very often, I pick up a cass...
TOM STOPPARD I think... the history of civilization is an attempt to codify, classify and categorize aspects of h...
TOM STOPPARD What Tolstoy is on about is that carnal love is not a good idea.
TOM STOPPARD Very often in Chekhov, where he exhibits a little bit of human behavior that you recognize as true, ...
TOM STOPPARD Chekhov understood that people are mysterious and can't be reduced to what we nowadays call '...
TOM STOPPARD I am not a mathematician, but I was aware that for centuries, mathematics was considered the queen o...
TOM STOPPARD Success is a sort of metaphysical experience. I live exactly as I did before - only on a slightly bi...
TOM STOPPARD There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we misse...
TOM STOPPARD Chekhov was capable of casually tossing off deplorable comments in his letters, combined with a very...
TOM STOPPARD If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character's mind at that point, it ...
TOM STOPPARD I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocrac...
TOM STOPPARD One of the attractions of translating 'Heroes' is that it's not the kind of play that I ...
TOM STOPPARD It is easily and often overlooked that when Thomas Jefferson asserted that life, liberty and the pur...
TOM STOPPARD After all these years, I definitely associate having a pen in my hand with having an ashtray just ou...
TOM STOPPARD Because theatre is a story-telling art form, we feel entitled to assume that the playwright got ther...
TOM STOPPARD I barely remembered my father; I'm confused between genuine memory and the few photographs that ...
TOM STOPPARD I'm good at being funny.
TOM STOPPARD If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of...
TOM STOPPARD A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, pop...
TOM STOPPARD If I hadn't left Czechoslovakia, I would have been dead.
TOM STOPPARD I just happen to know quite a lot of what happened in Czechoslovakia between 1968 and the fall of Co...
TOM STOPPARD I went to an English school and was brought up in English. So I don't feel Czech.
TOM STOPPARD The idea that being human and having rights are equivalent - that rights are inherent - is unintelli...
TOM STOPPARD Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a...
TOM STOPPARD Each move is dictated by the previous one--that is the meaning of order
TOM STOPPARD Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are...condemned. Each move...
TOM STOPPARD Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society.
TOM STOPPARD The whole notion of journalism being an institution whose fundamental purpose is to educate and info...
TOM STOPPARD One doesn't want one's democracy to behave like a dictatorial or fascistic police. One doesn...
TOM STOPPARD Rosencrantz: Do you think death could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: No, no, no...Death is......
TOM STOPPARD Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over... Death is not anything...de...
TOM STOPPARD It's better to be quotable than to be honest.
TOM STOPPARD Life in a box is better than no life at all ... I expect.
TOM STOPPARD The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
TOM STOPPARD We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on ...
TOM STOPPARD Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?
TOM STOPPARD The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always ...
TOM STOPPARD The days of the digital watch are numbered.
TOM STOPPARD If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of...
TOM STOPPARD I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
TOM STOPPARD I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to the death your right to say it.
TOM STOPPARD Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God
TOM STOPPARD We're actors - we're the opposite of people.
TOM STOPPARD It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.
TOM STOPPARD Pirates could happen to anyone.
TOM STOPPARD Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over... Death is not anything... d...
TOM STOPPARD I think I enlist comedy to a serious purpose.
TOM STOPPARD That I have the right to express myself freely at all times in all circumstances entails the idea th...
TOM STOPPARD In the end, my children put me on to Pink Floyd when they were teenagers.
TOM STOPPARD Pink Floyd are one of a handful of bands I've listened to a lot and whose concerts I've been...
TOM STOPPARD When I was younger, I could do something useful just by being free for half a day, but now I need fi...
TOM STOPPARD You do know what's coming up when you're translating. I suppose the concentration, then, is ...
TOM STOPPARD Life is a gamble, at terrible odds - if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.
TOM STOPPARD For me, the reputation for teaching language in general, and East European languages most particular...
TOM STOPPARD Like many people, I only knew of Ford Madox Ford through a book called 'The Good Soldier,' w...
TOM STOPPARD A free press needs to be a respected press.
TOM STOPPARD He's someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks the most interesting thing about any st...
TOM STOPPARD I want to support the whole idea of the humanities and teaching the humanities as being something th...
TOM STOPPARD In the period before the arrival of Mrs. Thatcher, politics had been in such low esteem. Everything ...
TOM STOPPARD It is no light matter to put in jeopardy a single life when it is the very singularity of each life ...
TOM STOPPARD Chater: You dare to call me that. I demand satisfaction!

Septimus: Mrs Chater demanded sa...
TOM STOPPARD THOMASINA:
But then the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great...
TOM STOPPARD Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie t...
TOM STOPPARD My life feels, week to week, incomplete to the level of being pointless if I am not in preparation f...
TOM STOPPARD I'm not one of those writers who insist they don't read reviews and don't care much abou...
TOM STOPPARD All of my scripts are based on other people's novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who wr...
TOM STOPPARD Life is a gamble, at terrible odds. If it were a bet you wouldn’t take it.
TOM STOPPARD I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that a...
TOM STOPPARD Lou Reed was a hero because he was an anti-hero.
TOM STOPPARD Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?
TOM STOPPARD It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can w...
TOM STOPPARD [Now] Bach ... a splash in the making.
TOM STOPPARD What a fine persecution - to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.
TOM STOPPARD Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order you can nudge t...
TOM STOPPARD If you took away everything in the world that had to be invented, there'd be nothing left except a l...
TOM STOPPARD Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want.
TOM STOPPARD The sense of suppression, ... or self-suppression, and pressure generally which came off even this p...
TOM STOPPARD James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be un...
TOM STOPPARD The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility withou...
TOM STOPPARD My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other...
TOM STOPPARD A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's ...
TOM STOPPARD Eternity's a terrible thought
TOM STOPPARD We've traveled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without poss...
TOM STOPPARD We're actors. We're the opposite of people.
TOM STOPPARD the bewilderment and incomprehension of critics and audience.
TOM STOPPARD It's wholly deserved and I am completely thrilled. As a writer he has been unswerving for 50 years, ...
TOM STOPPARD wholly deserved and I'm completely thrilled.
TOM STOPPARD Every exit is an entrance somewhere else
TOM STOPPARD I don't respond well to the Olympic noise, which is the noise of nationalistic triumphalism.
TOM STOPPARD Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a ...
TOM STOPPARD Traitors hoist by their own petard?--or victims of the gods?--we shall never know!
TOM STOPPARD I shall have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love, love, love, above all. Love as there has ne...
TOM STOPPARD It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to...
TOM STOPPARD It would have been nice to have had unicorns.
TOM STOPPARD It's where we're nearest to our humanness. Useless knowledge for its own sake. Useful knowledge is g...
TOM STOPPARD It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.... A door like this has ...
TOM STOPPARD Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder. In the end I gave in. That remin...
TOM STOPPARD I actually went to an Oasis concert. I thought they were a brilliant songwriting band.
TOM STOPPARD You can't treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires.
TOM STOPPARD Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherw...
TOM STOPPARD Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female ...
TOM STOPPARD HANNAH: Don't let Bernard get to you. It's only performance art, you know. Rhetoric, they used to te...
TOM STOPPARD Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it were a bet, you would not take it
TOM STOPPARD A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
TOM STOPPARD It is an interesting view of atheism, as a sort of "crutch" for those who can't stand the reality of...
TOM STOPPARD The idea of the state is, or should be, a very limited, prescribed idea. The state looks after the d...
TOM STOPPARD I have a spasm of envy for the person that was killed by a falling bookcase, as long as it doesn'...
TOM STOPPARD I was an awful critic. I operated on the assumption that there was an absolute scale of values again...
TOM STOPPARD What is the society we wish to protect? Is it the society of complete surveillance for the commonwea...
TOM STOPPARD Even when the writing seems very frivolous, I'm puritanical. I don't mean my subject matter....
TOM STOPPARD The idea that public safety, the safety of the innocent, is an absolute which trumps every other con...
TOM STOPPARD I feel overestimated.
TOM STOPPARD I'm not a theoretician about playwriting, but I have a strong sense that plays have to be pitche...
TOM STOPPARD We're actors — we're the opposite of people!
TOM STOPPARD Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something w...
TOM STOPPARD As a writer, Harold has been unswerving for 50 years,
TOM STOPPARD If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any g...
TOM STOPPARD I don't do interviews under false pretenses.
TOM STOPPARD Despite the digital age, there is a very large number of venues and spaces that are looking for play...
TOM STOPPARD I'm not like some other writers: I have no actual urgent need or desire to add to what's wri...
TOM STOPPARD I've voted in every election - not always for the same political party and never with any degree...
TOM STOPPARD I'm vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes.
TOM STOPPARD As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an ex...
TOM STOPPARD I like dialogue that is slightly more brittle than life. I have always admired and wished to write o...
TOM STOPPARD When I think of how things could have turned out, I feel as if I've dodged, not just bullets, bu...
TOM STOPPARD I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have...
TOM STOPPARD My scripts are possibly too talkative. Sometimes I watch a scene I've written, and occasionally ...
TOM STOPPARD Nobody would be killed on the roads if the speed limit were 10 miles an hour.
TOM STOPPARD There we were - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man...
TOM STOPPARD Theater in New York is nearer to the street. In London, you have to go deep into the building, usual...
TOM STOPPARD I don't think falling in love in Slovakia is much different from falling in love in Tunbridge We...
TOM STOPPARD GUIL: It [Hamlet's madness] really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mista...
TOM STOPPARD A man speaking sense to himself is no madder than a man speaking nonsense not to himself.
TOM STOPPARD There are certain sorts of jokes which have only to do with the substitution of the unexpected word ...
TOM STOPPARD Schepisi is the sort of director who could, would, and frequently did phone me whenever he came acro...
TOM STOPPARD One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that...
TOM STOPPARD The fact is, I loved being English. I was very happy to be turned into an English schoolboy.
TOM STOPPARD You end up going to school plays quite a bit as a parent, there are a lot of kids who are doing the ...
TOM STOPPARD Free to move, speak, extemporize, and yet. We have not been cut loose. Our truancy is defined by on...
TOM STOPPARD Let me get it straight. Your father was king. You were his only son. Your father dies. You are of ag...
TOM STOPPARD As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don't know what death is, it is illogical to fear it...
TOM STOPPARD All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and...
TOM STOPPARD We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.
TOM STOPPARD Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway.
Guildenstern: What?
Rosencrantz: England.
...
TOM STOPPARD