I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.
Tom Stoppard
Related Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, ... TOM STOPPARD Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order you can nudge t... TOM STOPPARD I think that at some point in your life you realize you don't have to worry if you do everything... JOE NAMATH If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right. HENRY FORD If you're having a down time at school and people are bullying you, they don't know you. The... MAISIE WILLIAMS We got ratings. It isn't that they won't quarrel with you, or say you're always right. B... NORMAN LEAR Every generation likes to think that children don't read as much as they used to when they were ... DARREN SHAN If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you're right. MARY KAY ASH Long-time viewing of Internet violence tend to change a person's temperament, making the person pron... YOU QUANXI If positive and healthy materials are absent, negative materials are sure to be dominant in the cybe... YOU QUANXI In a robust global business environment, our business units operated well in the first quarter. More... HARRY YOU The Board of Directors and I are pleased to recognize Peter's outstanding contribution to the succes... HARRY YOU We are pleased to close the books on 2004 following the painstaking review of almost five years of f... HARRY YOU A lot of people who don't write for kids think it's easy, because they think kids aren't... BRIAN SELZNICK I think Dutch people are very sober. I don't know if it's the right word. Like, you have the... MARTIN GARRIX You never saw Peter Sellers the actor trying to make you laugh. All he was doing was the character. ... STEVE CARELL I love how, when you're a teenager, you're really opinionated, you're really right, you ... MAGGIE CAREY What will make you a star is in you SOTONYE ANGA I always had a struggle, which I still do, when you're playing a character and it's not nece... KATEY SAGAL I try to explain to people that you get the roles that are right when they're right. If you have... ED HELMS If you get all the facts, your judgment can be right; if you don't get all the facts, it can'... BERNARD BARUCH I'm not a natural researcher, and I don't get bogged down in it, but I think if you get it r... SARAH PINBOROUGH When you're on a submarine you're usually underwater for months at a time, and you don't... JESSY SCHRAM I'm as loyal as anyone and will do anything for people I respect. But if you don't give that... ERIC WEDDLE I think everyone expects if you're in the lead, or if you're a favourite to win, you will wi... JASON DAY When I came out, I found I hadn't been born with the right genes. It's quite brutal. If you&... JOHN GRANT If you are making money writing, you are doing great. If you can support yourself writing, you are a... JULIE KLAUSNER There just aren't many little guys who are good actors. They don't get the training; they do... KENNY BAKER If you're healthy, if you don't get sick much, if you don't go to the doctor much or use... RUSH LIMBAUGH The world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don't mind happiness not always... LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI Having children makes you see the world in a completely different way. When you're responsible f... LINDA RONSTADT I would say it's not as hard as writing, because when you're a writer, you walk right into t... DAVID SELTZER But I think it's more that when you're young, you're invincible, you're immortal - o... DAMIEN HIRST If you don't respect me you're not gonna get that respect back. DAVID HASSELHOFF In Washington, if you're a congressman or a senator or the President, you make much more money t... BEAU WILLIMON When you make a decision, you need facts. If those facts are in your brain, they're at your fing... KEN JENNINGS When you're the object of everyone's affection, make no mistake about it: you are an object.... JENNETTE MCCURDY If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right. WILLIAM H. MCRAVEN If you're gay and you can't hold hands, or you're black and you can't catch a taxi, ... TONY KUSHNER Some writers are curiously unmusical. I don't get it. I don't get them. For me, music is ess... BARRY HANNAH Children don't really understand the concept of health. You can't give them an apple and say... MAGNUS SCHEVING In religious and in secular affairs, the more fervent beliefs attract followers. If you are a modera... JIMMY CARTER I don't think you're human if you don't get nervous. SIDNEY CROSBY You need a great idea, but then you've got to carry it through. If you get it right, you're ... IAN RANKIN We give a lot of others significance in our lives even when they don't deserve it. It doesn'... GABRIELLE UNION One of the things I learned in the military is sometimes you don't know what mistakes you make f... WESLEY CLARK There are Latino people in our world who believe strongly that if you are Latino you should speak th... SELENIS LEYVA When you're a teenager, everything seems like the end of the world, and I don't think that... VERONICA ROTH If you don't have the right people around you and you're moving at a million miles an hour y... DAVE CHAPPELLE The two things that can hurt you are if you need money or if you need fame. Those are the things tha... DANA CARVEY If you don't ponder the end of the world on a regular basis, I don't think you're really... EDAN LEPUCKI Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right. HENRY FORD You see people in the left lane, and as long as they are on the speed limit, they stay there. Get in... MARIO ANDRETTI Our children think our world will end. It's a tragic thing. Adults don't think that. They do... YANN ARTHUS-BERTRAND Writers used to make such wonderful pictures without all that swearing, all that cursing. And now it... ERNEST BORGNINE If you don't optimize for the consumer on the Internet, you're dead. DARA KHOSROWSHAHI For some reason, when I think feminism, I think, like, 'Well, you can't include men if you... COBIE SMULDERS If you're quiet, and you don't speak out, you're never going to get anything accomplishe... CARLI LLOYD A director makes 100 decisions an hour. Students ask me how you know how to make the right decision,... GEORGE LUCAS Hearing 'no' a lot of times usually tells you either you're crazy or you're on the r... MIKE KRIEGER I believe that poems are a score for performance by the reader, and that you become the speaking voi... HELEN VENDLER When you're drunk, you always think you're not. If you even drink at all don't get behin... BAM MARGERA Normally, most writers don't say, 'I'm going into a mild hypnotic trance.' Typically... MADISON SMARTT BELL I did some stupid things when I was younger, but I got a lot out of my system. Every time, my mom wa... ELLE KING When you start fooling around with drugs, you're hurting your creativity, you're hurting you... PAUL STANLEY I have friends who are scientists, strict materialists, who don't think science and religion are... SCOTT DERRICKSON I don't think you can teach people how to be funny. You can make suggestions about how to speak ... GEORGE CUKOR When you're travelling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your pa... WILLIAM LEAST HEAT-MOON If you create something, you don't want someone else to go and profit from it; you have your rig... KIM DOTCOM All pictures are unnatural. All pictures are sad because they're about dead people. Paintings yo... DAVID BAILEY Any time you play in a USGA Championship, if you don't drive the ball on the fairway, you're... TOM WATSON If the right people do the right things, we can walk, we can have a future. But if people don't ... TIM HARDAWAY Awards mean absolutely nothing if you don't get it. If you do get it, they're the best thing... MADS MIKKELSEN Right now, I don't have the same urges as other women when they see a baby. When I see children,... GABRIELLE UNION In the Army, because the stakes are so high - right? - you can't just be a yes-man and say, '... H. R. MCMASTER I don't think you can ever completely transform yourself on film, but if you do your job well, y... FRANCES MCDORMAND If you're from Dublin, for example, chances are you live with your family, if you're lucky e... RODDY DOYLE If you're trained in metaphysics, you don't see the world as distinct from yourself. You are... MARIANNE WILLIAMSON I think probably - I think, you know, when you're first dating somebody, if they're just not... GREG BEHRENDT You have to be very insensitive in order to have a cat, because I think they're very independent... JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT Well, they're Southern people, and if they know you are working at home they think nothing of wa... HARPER LEE Words are the tools of 'to be' - of expression. They are completely built on the fact that y... MARCEL DUCHAMP Either you're this, or you're that: either you're - if you're a Pakistani, you'r... MIRA NAIR They're trying to tell us that we're not right, so we have to buy their products. The number... NAOMI JUDD I think when you're acting, you usually don't have to know too much beyond how to pronounce ... ALAN ALDA You can watch actors create their illusions, but if you don't see where they get the pigeons fro... ALAN ALDA I was really a spoiled brat when I was a kid skating. Meals are cooked for you, you are driven to th... DOROTHY HAMILL If you're just a nice guy - you don't let people walk on you - but if you're just a nice... BILL ENGVALL If you look at the body of any writers' work, you can figure out the questions that animate them... ISOBELLE CARMODY Think about your menu, and if you're not a skilled chef - which I'm not - follow a recipe. Y... KAREN ELSON For every successful actor or actress, there are countless numbers who don't make it. The name o... LIAM NEESON People don't know how to place me in their consciousness. They think, 'Oh, you must be here ... RUPAUL I don't save people. God saves people. I can point them in the right direction. I can say, '... GREG BOYLE If you believe you are right, then you should believe that you can make the case that you're rig... JULIAN BAGGINI I think that everybody's worked on shows where you feel like maybe a divide has happened between... JESSALYN GILSIG I don't really care how the Patriots are perceived, truthfully. I really don't. I really don... TOM BRADY I don't think you should try to be anything you're not. If you're not smiling all the ti... ELLE FANNING The questions don't happen when you hit 30 homers, right? If you hit 30 home runs, you hit 40 do... BILLY BUTLER Life is full of trials and tribulations. It's dramatic when you don't treat people right whe... MARY J. BLIGE If you don't have an E-mail address, you're in the Netherworld. If you don't have your o... CLIFFORD STOLL
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... TOM STOPPARD The thing that happens remarkably often is that the people who are writing a dissertation believe th... 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 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 Directors sometimes have good ideas that I wished I'd had, not on rewriting but simply on stagin... 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