One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
Tom Stoppard
Related Often, the idea that there can be a wide range of translations of one text doesn't occur to peop... LYDIA DAVIS There are a lot of people getting killed by guns in our country for reasons, from my understanding, ... JEFF BRIDGES In the life of any actor or actress, there is inevitably a time when they will be eligible to act in... ED STOPPARD it is better to have red a great work of another culture in translation than never to have read it a... HENRY GRATTON DOYLE The best translations are always the ones in the language the author can't read. JORGE AMADO One of the reasons so many kids bought 'Famous Monsters' was that it gave them ability to or... HARRY KNOWLES I believe that there is a Matrix and... to be more accurate I am in the Pornography Matrix. DEYTH BANGER Many pictures turn out to be limp translations of the known world instead of vital objects which cre... ROBERT HEINECKEN Food Allergies Are Not Due to Food, Rather Are Due to the Constant Contamination of That Food That Y... THEHEALTHFOODGURU If you take society’s definition of knowing oneself, you will become lost in the many translations... GRACE SARA We all die, it's a fact that today you aren't here, yesterday you weren't here doesn't mean that tom... DEYTH BANGER Some hold translations not unlike to be / The wrong side of a Turkish tapestry. JAMES HOWELL I thought that strange syntax was the language of story books. I didn't realize those were poor ... SANDRA CISNEROS I don't really understand why so many fantasy writers choose to focus on worlds that just seem s... N. K. JEMISIN There are many reasons for the decline in royal esteem. One is that so many of the royals are thick. ALASTAIR CAMPBELL All translations are made up" opined Vikram, "Languages are different for a reason. You can't move i... G. WILLOW WILSON I should sometimes with pleasure resign the translations to others, that I might be more in the actu... HENRY MARTYN There doesn't seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs. E. O. WILSON A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations. EZRA POUND Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a ... TOM STOPPARD I don't know if I have a favorite color. KATE MIDDLETON It's very special having a new little girl. KATE MIDDLETON One thing about liberals: It doesn't even occur to them that there is another side to an argumen... MONICA CROWLEY That's one of the reasons why 'Lost' has to end: because we can't sit around and env... CARLTON CUSE And after I started working for the Bureau, most of my translation duties included translations of d... SIBEL EDMONDS There doesn't seem to be a religion in 'Game of Thrones' that's totally peaceful... ... CARICE VAN HOUTEN The two men had a conversation. Brief, cryptic, to the point. As though they had exchanged numbers a... ARUNDHATI ROY I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly. PAUL AUSTER There is no greater glory than to die for love. GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nasti... GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ She would defend herself, saying that love, no matter what else it might be, was a natural talent. S... GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ In any other corporation, if there was so many things that were found to be corrupt, then the man at... GARY LINEKER There are too many Jews in chess. They seem to have taken away the class of the game. They don't... BOBBY FISCHER One way or the other, if you want to find reasons why you shouldn't keep on, you'll find ... BENNY GOODMAN There's sadness to anyone that dies before their time, and specifically ones that seem to affect... CHRIS CORNELL I have one major problem with the internet: It's full of liars. There doesn't seem to be any... JOHN LYDON I really believe that's one of the many reasons that God had put me right in the middle of the B... BRIAN LITTRELL The only deadly disease I have seen that is causing great harm and massacre latently yet the world h... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Be kind. We never know what people are going through. Give grace and mercy because one day your circ... GERMANY KENT There doesn't seem to be a lot of middle ground with me. NATHAN LANE I don't believe that you have to dress in a masculine way to seem powerful. I think that the way... JASON WU Here is one fact 1 minute to finish the class, 1 day to die, one day behind that fact, one day in th... DEYTH BANGER Time is so important.'so spend time doing something that you love.' make the most of it and Let the ... NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost th... ELIZABETH BISHOP What's wonderful is to read the different translations - some done in 1600 and some in 1900 - of... MARTIN CRUZ SMITH Of course we may have any number of translations of a given text - the more the better, really. LYDIA DAVIS 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 You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part. HENRY JAMES the best of Cervantes is untranslatable, and this undeniable fact is in itself an incentive [for one... AUBREY F.G. BELL The Bible has been through at least half a dozen translations by the time you read it. Plus, when th... CRAIG FERGUSON The biggest challenge in big data today is asking the right questions of data. There are so many que... GURJEET SINGH That's one of the reasons I moved to Florida. Of course, the main reason is the weather and the ... MARTINA HINGIS 'Translations Through Speakers' was literally, I'm translating very spottily what my asp... JON BELLION If you're a technology investor, and you decide that you're also going to be a healthcare in... BILL MARIS The (Christian) "doctrines" are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has alrea... C.S. LEWIS One thing I have seen over and over again in life is that there is virtually no correlation between ... VINCENT BUGLIOSI We are just surprised why there are so many recruits being housed in a given time. Why are there so ... FRANCIS DOMINGO Division has always been a disease of the church... The Love Feast, which should have been the sign ... WILLIAM BARCLAY For most people, the Bible is a non-problematic book. What people don't realize is that they're read... BART EHRMAN There was a house at the foot of the tower, close to the thunder of the waves breaking against the c... GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ Of course I prefer to have nature around me, but it doesn't have to be with the exact original v... THEO JANSEN Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is ind... VOLTAIRE Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is ind... VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET) The witch-hunt narrative is now the conventional wisdom about these cases. That view is so widely en... ROSS CHEIT Why is it that almost every human culture yet discovered has found it necessary to believe in an aft... JUDITH HAYES One of the problems with science fiction, which is probably one of the reasons why I haven't don... RIDLEY SCOTT The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH In early 2010, we launched our first localized version of 'WhatsApp' for iPhone. It included... BRIAN ACTON There are so many unbelievable words... But that doesn't mean I have a favorite word. BRETT HULL I think one of the reasons 'Gremlins' lasts and some other films don't is because I don&... ZACH GALLIGAN By the 1880s, English translations of both the French and the Russian editions were available, and A... ALEXANDER CHEE People are fond of that 'crabs in a barrel' mentality, and I'm like, 'No, there need... OMARI HARDWICK The Imperial Senate, ever conscious of the weight of public opinion resting on the tip of the pencil... CHRISTINA ENGELA Rap has so many possibilities that need to be explored. There are different factions of rap, but som... MICHAEL FRANTI I wrote the first draft of 'Madame Bovary' without studying the previous translations, altho... LYDIA DAVIS I'm fucking the grave, I thought, I'm bringing the dead back to life... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Wherever modern translations of marked excellence were already in existence efforts were made to sec... JAMES LOEB I believe that we're not alone. How can we be alone in an infinite universe? I'm using the w... ROSE LESLIE I am often asked how it is that I am able to value people to such a deep degree. Apparently, I exhib... C. JOYBELL C. Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. I study pitchers. I visualize pitches. That gives me a better chance every time I step into the box.... MARK MCGWIRE Religion searches for reason, and never finds purpose. They think the purpose is to have better reas... R.J. BLIZZARD I'm not a best-seller, but through translations, I've accumulated some money. MANUEL PUIG Latinos are learning English. That doesn't mean that they should sacrifice their original langua... ILAN STAVANS Life begins somewhere and ends somewhere with time but to get somewhere with the life you have depen... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH The ‘doctrines’ we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are translations into ... C.S. LEWIS Obviously there is no such thing as race, and in many ways, sex is a continuum, not a binary. So it ... GLORIA STEINEM I don't like the idea of busing children all over the country. It's not safe. And there does... WAYNE WHITE There is so much art can do to enlighten people, no matter what their views might be. If art can'... OCTAVIA SPENCER The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it... JOHN CAGE My parents aren't married. And one of the reasons why they never got married is because they had... KATE HUDSON She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just ... STEPHEN CHBOSKY So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even... STEPHEN CHBOSKY I love my mom so much. I don't care if that's corny to say. I think on my next birthday, I'm going t... STEPHEN CHBOSKY We Are All Infinite STEPHEN CHBOSKY (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes... JEAN SASSON You can't just sit there and put everyone's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You ... STEPHEN CHBOSKY I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. ... STEPHEN CHBOSKY That one moment when you know you are not a sad story. You are ALIVE. STEPHAN CHBOSKY Somos quienes somos por un montón de razones.Quizás nunca conozcamos la mayoría de ellas.Pero aun... STEPHEN CHBOSKY
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 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 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