You do know what's coming up when you're translating. I suppose the concentration, then, is on finding a formulation which is speakable and in character - and economical as well, actually.
Tom Stoppard
Related In real life, you don't know what's going to happen to you, so why would your character know... ERIN RICHARDS My favorite part of a roller-coaster ride is when you're going up and you're slightly scared... GINA GERSHON I think I think in the moment. So when I'm in character, I'm in character, and I'm obvio... SACHA BARON COHEN One minute you're a developing athlete trying to get to the top, then the next minute you do wel... JESSICA ENNIS It's true in the beginning I started playing villains, and I think that's pretty clear, beca... WILLEM DAFOE It's a strange thing that we're actors, and we're always playing a character, and then s... RACHEL BROSNAHAN The only thing that I know how to do as an actor, as a trained actor, is you can't villainize th... COREY HAWKINS When you're young, you don't have any experience - you're charged up, but you're out... NEIL YOUNG If you're doing something like 'Arcadia' by Tom Stoppard, which has been done millions a... BEL POWLEY And if you're singing to someone, or if they're singing along, and suddenly you're in ha... JASON MRAZ You love the game, but it's hard to do the things you do when you're feeling like you're... CALVIN JOHNSON I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES I grew up at my grandmother's house and she had a beautiful garden. I used to hate mowing the la... ELTON JOHN I auditioned for 'The Office,' and I don't know if it was a role I could do, but I liked... NATHAN FIELDER Show business is - you're there by somebody's fluke. And as long as somebody likes you, and ... JOAN RIVERS It's actually meditative to sit in a character for an extended period of time, realizing what yo... FRANCES CONROY What I do like is hiking. And that's what filmmaking is. It's a hike. It's challenging a... JOSS WHEDON We're actually doing something scripted that's totally, you know, we kind of know what's... JOSH HOLLOWAY I think of myself as a character actor, compared to a straight actor. I know a character actor in En... BURN GORMAN I was always a character actress, even when I was an ingenue. But as you age, people know what to do... MARYLOUISE BURKE Everyone, when you're a teenager and you're growing up, you do feel like your life is dramat... BEN FOLDS Sometimes the eye gets so accustomed that if you don't have a change, you're bored. It's... BILL BLASS Life is full of trials and tribulations. It's dramatic when you don't treat people right whe... MARY J. BLIGE I actually think acting is a form of self-hypnosis. You have to be hyper, hyper aware of what's ... JULIANNE MOORE With voice overs... you're not thinking about the camera. So your voice becomes this thing that ... AVAN JOGIA I suppose my look, the way I play - you combine all that sort of stuff and that makes people interes... SHANE WARNE As long as you're true to you, you believe it and you make others believe it, then what you'... JAKE OWEN I always had a struggle, which I still do, when you're playing a character and it's not nece... KATEY SAGAL When you're telling a story, the best stories, every character has an arc. Every one. And that a... ROY CONLI I think when you get on with the actors that you're working with, even if you do have really int... SAOIRSE RONAN When the pastor's up there, they do this thing called looping. They are literally riffing and sp... ANDERSON PAAK You're a person a lot longer before and after you're a professional athlete. People always s... DEREK JETER There's always pressure, from other people and yourself. If you're happy with the looks you&... NATALIE PORTMAN To do a movie with someone like Tom Hanks that when you tell your dad, your dad knows who Tom Hanks ... SARITA CHOUDHURY Something like 'Psycho,' which is this psychological thing that slowly, slowly, slowly build... ARTHUR SLADE When you're doing lots and lots of episodes and you're playing the same character, it's ... MISHA COLLINS You're the luckiest person in the entire world if you know what you really want to do, which I w... ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER I think that one of the things that you do learn is that falling in love and being in love with some... JULIANNE MOORE I suppose I don't hear things, but I listen, if you know what I mean. And there is a big differe... EVELYN GLENNIE Designing is a matter of concentration. You go deep into what you want to do. It's about intensi... PETER ZUMTHOR As the TiVos and the Replays are coming into our world - and they're coming - it's better to... LESLIE MOONVES I think what is nice about 'Elf,' and why it doesn't play as one long sketch, is that th... JON FAVREAU Touring is tough. You're almost in a haze because you don't really know where you are half t... VANESSA HUDGENS I've had to really teach myself that when you're not feeling it, you shouldn't write any... COREY TAYLOR I suppose when you do it correctly, a good introduction and a good outro makes the song feel like it... BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Writing a song to be a single is hard, and I don't like to focus on that because you can get cau... BRENDON URIE I bill myself as a naturalist because if you say you're a naturalist, it gives people a conversa... GREG GRAFFIN The time to worrying about flying is when you're on the ground. When you're up in the air, i... DENZEL WASHINGTON When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight... LAURENCE OLIVIER When I hear myself singing, I hear Iggy Pop and Jimi Hendrix. There's a conversational thing goi... CHRISSIE HYNDE What I've always said about comedy is if you do it in the right way, you can say anything to any... TREVOR NOAH What bothers me, I guess, is when I get these messages from girls on Twitter, and they're like, ... CARA DELEVINGNE When you're writing non-fiction, you go as far as you can go, and then ethically you have to sto... GERALDINE BROOKS The very first job I did, a Barbie commercial when I was eight or nine, that was like 'Oh my God... BIANCA LAWSON Yes, it's a very difficult thing to do, to promote a record, do television shows, and to still w... CHRIS LOWE When you're young, you don't really know quite what you're aiming at. You're very im... SINEAD O'CONNOR When you're young, you don't really know quite what you're aiming at. You're very im... SINEAD O'CONNOR When it's a love scene with someone you actually love, there's no feeling like, 'Can I t... ANNA PAQUIN When you're scared, when you're hanging on, when life is hurting you, then you're going ... SYLVESTER STALLONE The rules of suspense are that you do know, and you just don't know when. In the Hitchcock rules... GUS VAN SANT When we can't determine what is art - when you get to that point where we're not sure, that&... RICHARD PHILLIPS What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need... DORIS LESSING When you're editing, you're putting it together in a way that makes sense metaphysically. Yo... D. A. PENNEBAKER Life is short and if you're looking for extension, you had best do well. 'Cause there's ... BEN HARPER The worst part about being married is when you're not connecting. Your partner is going out the ... PATRICK DEMPSEY In a sense it's a lot crazier when you're on the road and it's a lot less stable, but it... FIONA APPLE You know, when you're making a record, you come up with 15, 20 songs. Then they start to fall by... DAVID JOHANSEN When you do well in a movie that's seen as really great, you're revitalized for six weeks. HANK AZARIA I find it irresponsible to go, 'She's an actress, what does she know?' That means if you... EVA LONGORIA It's like, now you're actually complaining because you're making $9 million and guys are... ERIC DAVIS What I've been noticing is people coming up to me and going, 'Are you an actor?' which i... ALFIE ALLEN Stand for something. Make your life mean something. Start where you are with what you have. You are ... GERMANY KENT When I say 'yes' to a movie it's usually because, to a greater or lesser extent, it'... JOHN TRAVOLTA I think what's important in a good manager and a good agent is that they know your vision and th... MAIARA WALSH I feel character description from a book can mislead you and actually make you fall off course when ... WILL POULTER 'SNL' is really hard to do when you're single and living alone. And then it's pretty... BILL HADER I'm not the kind of actress that goes home with the character. I mean, you're thinking about... NATASHA RICHARDSON My background is in acting, so I enjoy being able to show what I'm looking for. With acting, it&... KIM JI-WOON What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came... MAYA ANGELOU I understood it's a business as far as when you're drafting someone, and you want a guy you ... STEFON DIGGS I am not a fan of referencing your own work when it's in a different universe than what you'... JOSS WHEDON When you're young, you're always wondering when you're actually going to feel like a gro... DREW BARRYMORE In life, you know, they do this in focus groups; if you were in such and such circumstance, what wou... VIOLA DAVIS I think it's hard to know how one deals in situations of confrontation until you're actually... JUSTIN TRUDEAU What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people... WILLIAM LEAST HEAT-MOON I think when you're young, you're a lot more open-minded, and sometimes you're a lot mor... ZENDAYA I think in most cases, when you're writing a song, you're just making up a little story, and... ADAM SCHLESINGER Acting is so exciting to me. It's a thrill; otherwise I wouldn't do it. Not to be hokey, but... ELIZABETH MITCHELL When you're doing what you love, it's not exhausting at all, actually. It's completely e... BILLY PORTER You either end up on a good, fun show that's successful, or you have that question mark in your ... LUCY GRIFFITHS Once you have love as a motivator in a story, your character is free to do anything. Once you say th... JOSH HUTCHERSON It's different being a director. I suppose, especially if it's a story you've written an... PADDY CONSIDINE You look at the part in '12 Years A Slave,' you finish that script - I mean, it's a powe... PAUL DANO I'm very opinionated, and when you're put in a position where you're getting the storyli... MATTHEW DAVIS The mainstream media today has the biggest disconnect with its audience that it's ever, ever had... RUSH LIMBAUGH I think that one of the things that we have to recognize is that the longer somebody doesn't hav... KEVIN HASSETT I don't want to sound like an old grandmother but actually it's quite nice when you get up e... SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR I've never seen a tornado and I've lived in Oklahoma City basically my whole life. It's ... MICK CORNETT If you're an entrepreneur and you're starting a company, I think the first thing you do is y... DAVE GOLDBERG Success is a terrible thing and a wonderful thing. If you can enjoy it, it's wonderful. If it st... GENE WILDER
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 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