Because theatre is a story-telling art form, we feel entitled to assume that the playwright got there before we got there.


Tom Stoppard

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we
sat there
smoking
cigarettes
at
5
in the morning.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
I believe that there is a Matrix and... to be more accurate I am in the Pornography Matrix.
DEYTH BANGER
Hakuna mimi katika umoja. Kuna sisi.
ENOCK MAREGESI
You can find sorrow in the arithmetic, and you can find a bittersweet hope.
DAVID LEVITHAN
We didn’t think anything of it at the time, but we saw several of the bodies of the crew, space pi...
CHRISTINA ENGELA
It's barely a science because there is so much art that goes into it and so many assumptions. It's t...
LAURA HUNTER
It got into a more soul feel. We always go on incredible trips. There was always a story that was mi...
EBEN WIGHT
I really believe that studying organization, even in the form of studying detective story organizati...
PETER SHAFFER
Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a ...
TOM STOPPARD
When carrying the burden of problems and stress that life seems to endlessly hurtle towards us. We g...
GARY F EVANS...
To have hope in an age where hope is very scarce and hurt, jealousy and pain are more prominent is a...
GARY F EVANS...
Truth metastasized into lurid fantasy.
F. MULDER
I got out of autobiography because my story is, I was famous, it was hard for me, I got into therapy...
COURTNEY THORNE-SMITH
35. God is entitled to a portion of our income—not because He needs it but because we need to give...
JAMES C. DOBSON
We feel comfortable that the numbers we've got out there are achievable.
BRIAN HALLA
There is a story, there is a scene which you always miss and you never pay attention at it... (The R...
DEYTH BANGER
I think the short story is a very underrated art form. We know that novels deserve respect.
NEIL GAIMAN
If you're doing something like 'Arcadia' by Tom Stoppard, which has been done millions a...
BEL POWLEY
Their pilots trained for a month before we even got there.
BEN MASSEY
We got tentative there, because we kind of got soft both offensively and defensively.
CK HANSEN
I think our bracket looks, superficially, to me to be the toughest. That and Oakland look very, very...
JIM CALHOUN
Whenever we go out there at the end with Tom, we know we've got a chance to get in field goal range....
BEN WATSON
There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not...
MARK TWAIN
Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an...
LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD
He got in the woods before they got there (because) he was so far ahead of them.
DAVID JARRELL
We feel that we can do a lot better. There is a huge gap between India and Australia, but at least w...
JAMES STEEL
There can be no reproach to pain unless we assume human dignity, there is no reason for restraints o...
RAVI ZACHARIAS
I've always had an interest in story-telling and history and just film and art in general, but p...
JOHN LEGEND
We got kind of into a rhythm at 'Parks' because there were so many characters that we had an...
ALAN YANG
We feel we had a very good year. I think we're slowly getting (noticed) out there that we've got a n...
MIKE GODSIL
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
When living is too sweet and swanky, it may be very hard to appreciate the simplest things in life. ...
ERIK PEVERNAGIE
Don't assume that what we currently think is out there is the full story. Go after the dark matt...
NATHAN WOLFE
We finished the game with everybody out there. That wasn't a big deal. Everyone came out of there. W...
DUANE STARKS
Playing live is really the art form. You're a lot freer, a lot looser. You've got people the...
BUTCH TRUCKS
The reason we have so much drug activity, violence and crime is because there are no jobs, ... There...
CHARLES JACKSON
Wavy Gravy was the flavor that I cut my teeth on. There were over 750 variations before we hit the r...
ARNOLD CARBONE
I recognize that there was work people did before we got here, and I have respect for that.
DAVE FISHER
We've got nothing, but we have everything we need. I've got my wife, my son. We've got food and shel...
DANNY WUERFFEL
Everything we do really is just a little marker on the long road to death. And sometimes that's over...
JOSS WHEDON
Everything we do really is just a little marker on the long road to death. And sometimes that’s ov...
JOSS WHEDON
It's a little slower process there because you've got to get that inflammation out of there. There's...
LARRY ROTHSCHILD
We got to see the Braves play the (St. Louis) Cardinals the Sunday we got down there. That was a rea...
BRAD HANKINS
They got electricity 12 hours before we got there. We saw a sign that Wal-Mart was open from 8 a.m. ...
TRACY MILLER
The players know there is pressure on us to beat Scotland. We have to show the form which got us res...
GETHIN JENKINS
Maggie and I got married and then had to wait three years before we got to take our honeymoon becaus...
ROB MCCLURE
Plunging in “truths” about God is like walking on the bottom of a sea that is not there, searchi...
MARIANA FULGER
Vince Carter is such a great player that we need two guys to try to stop him. When we got there to t...
SAM CASSELL
It's such an important work in the development of opera as an art form - the orchestra is not just a...
PAT MILLER
No, I don't feel we got screwed because we got such a great reception. People still rave about it al...
JOEL SCHUMACHER
It's a horrible way for them (Tigers) to lose, and you never feel happy for that, but I've been ther...
JAMES CAUSEY
We proceeded to start a professional theatre but not really knowing how to do it. As my mom said, 'T...
WILLIAM JONES
My husband worked 60 Saturdays in a row before he got a break, ... But we got paid because we have o...
STEPHANIE ADAMS
These times are much franker. For example, in the first movie we have to assume that the daughter an...
STEVE MARTIN
There is no catch. Just go do it. The only catch is you've got to ask for it. You've got to fill out...
JOHN BRYANT
I need to know that there even is such a thing as okay, or maybe not just okay, maybe even good, and...
KATJA MILLAY
We are trying to narrow down to the minimum that we feel we need before we put a cost out there.
ANN THOMPSON
People come to the Fountain Theatre because they've got hearts that are working and they've ...
ATHOL FUGARD
I don't think theater is dying, and musicals are a great American art form. We've got apple ...
LAURA BENANTI
Mostly water bottles. I thought they were going to start shooting before we got out of there.
DAMIONE LEWIS
When we get there, we'll be psyched because we've got a chance (to go a long way).
KAYLIN AUSTEN
Everybody's got a different way of telling a story - and has different stories to tell.
KEITH RICHARDS
We liked to put a great deal of pressure on the ball. When they feel that pressure, they'll penetrat...
ERIC REICHERT
Oh, absolutely, it felt more serious than your typical job. One of the things that got us through ho...
JOHN C. REILLY
Ashley decided that before Madeleine even got there that she is the best person ever,
AMY ADAMS
Theatre's great. It's such an act of faith. It's a wonderful art form where you suspend ...
ISRAEL HOROVITZ
We got trashed up there. There were a couple of things we were able to do tonight that made the diff...
GUY ISABELLE
It got a little exciting there but we held on and got a victory like we needed to.
AARON STIEGELER
The elite is sitting up there with no losses, ... Then you got the good guys. We just got thrown dow...
BOBBY BOWDEN
They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions......
HARPER LEE
If we really are saying rap is an art form, then we got to be more responsible for our lyrics. If yo...
TUPAC SHAKUR
We really feel we've got a hidden gem if we can get him back to that level that he was at the end of...
LINDY RUFF
We realize that something's got to happen. I think there is certainly a resolve to try.
REP. SCOTT BEDKE
We had to drive in hours and hours of traffic to Jackson, Miss., because our flight from New Orleans...
FRANKIE MUNIZ
My art and poetry is very political now. Because you've got to find that truth within you and ex...
JACK BOWMAN
We like to think this is a significant case. We think it is a story that needed telling.
JAMES HACKER
Coach got on our tails about us not playing as hard as we usually play, so we had to really think ab...
BRANDON BOWDRY
My eyes hurt... but there is something more... I can't stop listening to horror.... now I am going t...
DEYTH BANGER
There were a few 6th form girls that I got with when I was I the 6th form, they were really nice, so...
CHARLIE SIMPSON
The more stories I study, the more I begin to suspect that there is only one story, and that ...
J. ALEKSANDR WOOTTON
We feel very much disturbed that we find ourselves in this dilemma, because we have not experienced ...
JEREMIAH
We got a little trigger-happy there.
BILL DREIKOSEN
Reality in movies is the reality of the story you're telling, so it may not match the reality as...
CALEB DESCHANEL
Yeah I'm telling real stories, but if you pick up a documentary on strippers, you're going t...
METHOD MAN
I don't think there's anything that can prepare them, really. You've got to be there. You've got to ...
MIKE KRZYZEWSKI
We were able to put Colby in there and he gave us a spark. That got them settled down. That 90 yard ...
DAN COCANNOUER
There's always a possibility that something could be there that we didn't see. But we threw a lot of...
MIKE BARNES
Personally I feel we've got the cart before the horse. We need to identify: Do we need to move the t...
DAVID ALEXANDER
There's no success story. Everybody's got a ghetto story. You always want to make it bigger ...
BERNIE MAC
It's the inflation story, it's there and it's got implications going forward.
DREW MATUS
Clearly the flag was there, ... because the intercepts show that the helicopter pilots saw it immedi...
JAMES BAMFORD
We got a little conservative because we certainly wanted to make sure we got the win.
DAN SABERS
My own belief is that many people don't believe that there can be gold and platinum in this environm...
JAY TAYLOR
Obviously, there is some apprehension there because they've never umpired at the professional level....
TODD STEVERSON
All we did in Alabama was have a read through with the script, but there was, 'No, well, it needs mo...
ALBERT FINNEY
I think you've got to feel that way. But we got one stolen from us earlier this year. So we got one ...
DAN CAMPBELL
For some decades now, it seems, there has been a ukase in place in American journalism to the effect...
STOCKWELL DAY
We got a call that the church was on fire and we just left coming that way to the church and it was ...
DENNIS HAMILTON
We got off to a rough start up there and we had to get off to a good start. We got a lead kept our l...
JASON KIDD

More Tom Stoppard

Good things, when short, are twice as good.
TOM STOPPARD
Time is short, life is short, there's a lot to know. So I skip the entertainers in the newspaper...
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The thing that happens remarkably often is that the people who are writing a dissertation believe th...
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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 ...
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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.
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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 '...
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I am not a mathematician, but I was aware that for centuries, mathematics was considered the queen o...
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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...
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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
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