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Schepisi is the sort of director who could, would, and frequently did phone me whenever he came across a textual problem.


Tom Stoppard

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Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a ...
TOM STOPPARD He would listen and he would pick the phone up. Even if he couldn't get the problem solved, people c...
BRIAN SHEPARD 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 like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES David did a lot of networking. He gave his card to everyone we came across, (even) insurance agents ...
HILLEARY BOGLEY He could cheat on me and he would never tell me, and he would think less and less of me for not figu...
GILLIAN FLYNN Everyone wants Steve to do well because he really is the nicest guy you would ever come across. When...
JUDD APATOW Everyone wants Steve to do well because he really is the nicest guy you would ever come across. When...
JUDD APATOW Allen came across as quite humble, and Portland likes people to be approachable. He appeared to sort...
ERIK STEN I think my friend Tom Hanks knows me. He understands me very well. He's always had a sort of par...
JOHN TRAVOLTA Personally and professionally, I did not feel that I could commit to the job for three years, and as...
ANN SIMS I'm sad to see him go. I hope and pray we get the level of cooperation from the next director as we ...
ABE BONOWITZ 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 I was concerned about who he would put in there as FBI director because he had expressed antipathy f...
LOUIS FREEH Tom Welter (the OSAA executive director) told me they were getting a hearings officer ready to go (t...
DON ALEXANDER I was at a dinner party many years ago,sitting along from Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not...
STEPHEN FRY Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C. He came into our locker room that first time, and everybody was just kind of sitting there. The firs...
JACOB BURTSCHI I was on the phone with Marsha, who said the doctor had diagnosed him with ALS. I said, 'Gosh, my fe...
TOM WATSON The first time I did a big American film, I was surprised by all the different financiers who came t...
STELLAN SKARSGARD I had a moment like that with Wilt (Chamberlain). He knocked me out of bounds, I came back and faked...
KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR The fact is that Tom Campbell is like you and me. He is not a career politician like Tom DeLay. He i...
MICHAEL STANLEY I think he had a quite sort of ambiguous relationship to Holmes. It made him rich, it made him famou...
JULIAN BARNES You must remember that Matricardi was the executive director of RPV. He wasn't just some muckety muc...
CHRISTOPHER SPENCER Anyone who knows Mr. Spelling would know that he could not, would not and did not do any of the thin...
BERT FIELDS He could have gone to any gallery in town. I think the Galveston Arts Center came up, and it was a c...
BETTY MOODY He looked like the sort of person who would tell you that he did not have an umbrella to lend you wh...
LEMONY SNICKET Tom and I didn't have a problem with the height differential but Paramount did, so we tried to h...
KELLY MCGILLIS Several of the actors I've had the good fortune of working with stand out in my mind as 'ultimate'. ...
BARRY PEPPER Everyone wants Steve to do well because he really is the nicest guy you would ever come across. When...
JUDD APATOW He is just a guy who would never do that sort of thing intentionally. He is as honest as the day is ...
AARON WARD If men could regard the events of their lives with more open minds they would frequently discover th...
ANDRE MAUROIS Anyone who came in when he did would have had a steep hill to climb, in part because change can be d...
JANE HARMAN I got a lot of love for NBC, Tom Brokaw. He did a lot for me, and I appreciate him, and I owe a lot ...
ALLEN IVERSON All you can really do as director is sort of set a tone.
ADAM MCKAY If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what 'Uncle Tom's C...
HELEN HUNT JACKSON I thought he'd appreciate that. Whenever Tom led our morning worship service, he'd often just sit in...
GREG ROLLINS I was hoping for just a note or a phone call. Once Scott found out, this is just the type of guy he ...
TRACY SMITH If men could regard the events of their own lives with more open minds, they would frequently discov...
ANDRE MAUROIS What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that ...
J.D. SALINGER If you're doing something like 'Arcadia' by Tom Stoppard, which has been done millions a...
BEL POWLEY He is the first director to call me 'Uncle'!
JACKIE SHROFF Tom was an astonishingly dedicated musician even back then. Whenever you'd run into Tom in the halls...
LES MARSDEN Several of the actors I've had the good fortune of working with stand out in my mind as 'ult...
BARRY PEPPER I was surprised that he took it as well as he did. They would have had to carry me away in a straitj...
BRIAN SHIMER He came across in a loving, respectful way.
JERRY FALWELL The real moon,if you could reach it and survive it, would in a deep and deadly sense be just like an...
C.S. LEWIS [Actor Tom Oliver, who plays Lou Carpenter, tells me:] Whenever an issue arises, both sides of the c...
IAN SMITH He is a smooth talker. Victims always said they were spoken to by a clear, intelligent-sounding adul...
BILL WILSON I just did it, ... I didn't really think about it. The run kind of just came to me. I landed everyth...
JAMIE BESTWICK I don't really know a lot of famous people. I've met a lot of famous people. If I ran into T...
DAVID ZUCKER Well we had nine top forensic pathologists from across the country, who operated as a panel, who loo...
LOUIS STOKES If you can't work what else can you do? Wait until it is ended, which is what we did. When the PA cl...
GENPIETRO PISTOLESE His brain was like a smart phone; whenever a life asked him to take an important call, it would hang...
DR HITESH C SHETH He actually came out with an extraordinary deal, considering what he did. I think the jurors could b...
KENT SCHAFFER He came up to me after the state meet and apologized for not breaking the record. There are very few...
BOB LIEBER My father realizes that he did okay with me. He did the best he could.
SAGE STALLONE The next day at college he followed me to the girls' loos (toilets) in the basement. When I came out...
CYNTHIA LENNON In the life of any actor or actress, there is inevitably a time when they will be eligible to act in...
ED STOPPARD There would be times when we'd rack our brains on a user interface problem, and think we'd considere...
WALTER ISAACSON Whenever you get that sort of wetland component, you get a lot of productivity, ... People in the No...
DAVID HOUGHTON When I was in college, my brother, B.R. Chopra, who is everything to me, was a director in Bombay. H...
YASH CHOPRA Who really knows, and who can swear,
How creation came, when or where!
Even gods came afte...
RIG VEDA The genome could finally solve also this problem — supposing it is genetically related — providi...
RICCARDO VELASCO You know, as director of the CIA, I got an awful lot of intelligence about all the horrible things t...
LEON PANETTA Any line of code I write could in fact trip across a patent I never even knew existed, and that's a ...
MICHAEL TIEMANN He was fine, he sort of ducked and it came down on his back.
BRUCE ROBERTSON If there was an attack ad that mentioned both Johnson and Daschle, that would part of the agreement....
CHRISTINE IVERSON The ellipsis is, probably, the most accurate numerical and textual representation of reality.
MARIANA FULGER We came into the game knowing that the bullpen was going to have do some work, so it was good to be ...
BRAD THOMPSON It's sort of a bland menu. It takes care of anybody who has a health problem.
ALBERTA STIMA And through the hall there walked to and fro A jolly yeoman, marshall of the same, Whose name ...
EDMUND SPENSER Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beatin...
LANGSTON HUGHES one big problem and a great paradox in the arena of life is the problem of where or how a person is ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH My first movie ever was 'Breaking Away.' I stumbled into an incredible part in a movie that ...
DANIEL STERN Whenever your phone is ringing off the hook, you know something good happened,
JASON GORE The biggest problem is that Duncan didn't come across as someone who was convinced of his own guilt....
ROBERT MINTZ Rohan has a strong throwing arm, so he was definitely able to give us the look when we faced big-arm...
DON DAVIS Tom Lynch may not be the only one who could use a sensitivity workshop.
RAND HOCH Kevin [McKenzie, ABT's artistic director] has sort of brought 'Afternoon of a Faun' into the rep as ...
JULIE KENT Africa was full of people in need of help and there had to be a limit. You simply could not help eve...
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH Government frequently has a problem recognizing perception versus reality.
BILL OWENS Humour: Is the mobile phone male or female? Ans: female. Explanation: mobile = o-bil-me = O! Bill Me...
APURVA GAGLANI It was you and me, Tom. We did this to them. To us.
JAMES DASHNER Whenever that phone rings, I'm always looking. I could be going in in the fifth inning or the fourth...
ADAM WAINWRIGHT He assured me there was no problem and he would have had to assure himself (of that) as well,
JEAN CHRETIEN I felt that if I would chew a certain way and the director would let me do whatever.
SOFIA VERGARA The current FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, is highly regarded, but some distrust him because he is the f...
MARVIN AMMORI I was put in a position with a man that, whenever he would call me at work or at home, work-related,...
ANDREA MACKRIS We've had our moments, but who doesn't. He has been so good to me. If there was anything I wanted an...
BERTHA STANEK He came really close to hitting me. If he would have hit me, we would have fought.
JAMONT GORDON In a patriarchal society, one of the most important functions of the institution of the family is to...
MOKOKOMA MOKHONOANA Eric's played with me before. So he knows what I'm looking for and he came in and did a beautiful jo...
JOE WOLF When he came in, he represented a totally different problem. If you didn't knock down the pass, if y...
DENIS POTVIN When he came to my home, he was just as nice as he could be, well-educated, well-mannered. We sat an...
LINDA HEMBREE Radio used to be dominated by Tom Petty and artists like that. If Tom Petty came out today, he'd...
CHARLES KELLEY He comes to me when I call him. One day I was by the mailbox and I called for him, and he came runni...
CHERYL PEYERK I have been waiting around to get the right script and the right director. For example, in the past,...
GONG LI the recordings became bigger than the songs, which I came to understand is a backwards way of doing ...
NEIL DIAMOND

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 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 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