Success is a sort of metaphysical experience. I live exactly as I did before - only on a slightly bigger scale. Naturally, I won't be corrupted. I'll sit there in my Rolls, uncorrupted, and tell my chauffeur, uncorruptedly, where to go.
Tom Stoppard
Related From a good lie in the middle of a fairway bunker, I'll make the same swing as I do from an aver... ERNIE ELS A lot of female comedians will go up there in a sweatshirt and Converses, trying to dress themselves... CARLY CRAIG I can see myself as a very old man in a terrific wheelchair. Only, I won't be photographing the ... RICHARD AVEDON When you're a chef, you graze. You never get a chance to sit down and eat. They don't actual... GORDON RAMSAY Everyone has a few little quirks in their preparation - I just tend to do the same sort of things as... JADE JONES Everybody knows what my sexual orientation is. I don't need to scream it out. I won't, only ... KARAN JOHAR My way of being with people is probably incredibly unhealthy, in that I'll be incredibly social,... CHUCK PALAHNIUK I can't say I have enough experience with Hollywood to feel that I've encountered racism the... LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA I don't agree with superstitious routines, but there are a couple of things I'll always do b... JAMES BLUNT I won't tell anyone where my favourite place in Scotland is... but it might be somewhere on Skye... SAM HEUGHAN I tell people, and it's the truth, I could sit in my garage for a week and it won't make me ... JOYCE MEYER I wasn't naturally gifted in terms of size and speed; everything I did in hockey I worked for, a... WAYNE GRETZKY I'll kind of get interested in a subject and I won't know why. It'll be in my head for m... QUIARA ALEGRIA HUDES My style will be management by being on the street, management by walking around. Third persons won&... CARL STOKES I'll never get out of politics. I have friends in public office. I have things that I want to do... KARL ROVE I have a constitutional weakness in which I am very easily distracted by flashing lights. If there i... RACHEL MADDOW My husband jokes that I'll invite people over for dinner and he won't know who they are or w... CARRIE-ANNE MOSS By exercise. I'll tell you one thing, you don't always have to be on the go. I sit around a ... JACK LALANNE When I sing, I go somewhere else. Every time after I sing, I'll ask, 'Did I do OK?' Beca... ASHLEY MONROE I maybe had a first love and had my heart broken, but reflecting on it, I don't think that was l... SELENA GOMEZ Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on... SAMUEL BECKETT I lived in a country where I couldn't live where I wanted to live. I lived in a country where I ... SIDNEY POITIER I like to be home on a Friday night. I don't go out. I don't go to clubs. It's not my th... KALEY CUOCO I don't want everybody to see exactly where I live, what my sofa or my fireplace looks like. MARILYN MONROE Every two months, I'll get a trim, and every two years, I'll get a cut. And my night ritual ... TRACEE ELLIS ROSS World records at 19. I don't want that. Later, yes. And when it comes, I'll learn to live wi... STEVE PREFONTAINE As a kid, I'd eat at my mother's house, then go down the road to my girlfriend's and eat... BRUCE SMITH If I write a book where all I've ever experienced is success, people won't take a positive l... SONIA SOTOMAYOR The greatest luxury is not driving. I didn't own a car until I was 30, and that was a Rolls-Royc... MICHAEL CAINE I'll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I'll sort of have the ... STEVE JOBS It'll be all of our efforts together. It won't won't ever be exactly the way I imagined ... JAMES CAMERON What makes most people comfortable is some sort of sense of nostalgia. I grew up in a small town, an... JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE In high school, I used to draw on my arms with a Sharpie. I knew I was gonna have a lot of tattoos. ... ODELL BECKHAM, JR. I try not to be cruel to people. I know there's a karma, and I'm constantly thinking of my b... MISSY ELLIOTT I won't do things for money. I can't. So I'll hold out and say, in my mind, 'There... BRIE LARSON When I testify, I'll testify. I don't need to sit around chewing my fingernails. MARK FUHRMAN I don't know rap. I can't tell you a Tupac song. But you put on some go-go, and I'll kno... SHY GLIZZY I won't go to England because they won't let my dog in. UTA HAGEN My manager's biggest dream is for me to be on Letterman. She says, 'Oh, Maggie, will you pro... MAGGIE Q My high school experience was kind of like 'Mean Girls.' It was very much like a bad B movie... ANDIE MACDOWELL I don't have a permanent place where I live. I'm in Atlanta about six or seven months out of... BROOKE ELLIOTT I'll quit coffee. It won't be easy drinking my Bailey's straight, but I'll get used ... MEGAN MULLALLY It slightly depends on your perspective, sort of how you look at these things, but when I sit down t... ALEX GARLAND When I was on 'All My Children,' we did a thing for 'Seventeen Magazine' where a gir... JOSH DUHAMEL We're only on the earth for a short period of time. Movies aren't enough. I want to take my ... PAUL WALKER I'd like to produce, direct, write, score, and star in a film in exactly the way Chaplin did. I&... EDDIE MURPHY I go through periods where I don't shop at all, and then I go crazy and buy everything in sight.... BROOKE ADAMS I just go where my heart tells me, where my gut tells me to go, where I'm enjoying my life the m... DANICA PATRICK There are some different things I'm writing and developing, but I don't know where they'... ABBY ELLIOTT I honestly believe you can never tell if a relationship is going to last. In my own marriage, which ... MICHAEL IAN BLACK I think because I did become a well-known face in my thirties and not in my twenties, I was pretty s... ASHLEY JENSEN I don't chart out the life histories of the people I play. If I did, I'd be in trouble. I wo... ERNEST BORGNINE Siren voices tell me, 'You don't have to keep going on.' And then you think, 'I'... TERRY PRATCHETT I sleep on my stomach with my head under a bunch of pillows so if someone wants to come in and try t... WIZ KHALIFA Sometimes I'll go to the grocery store and buy a bunch of groceries as though I knew how to cook... MIKE BIRBIGLIA I live off a motto that says, 'yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery'. I have goals an... VANILLA ICE There was this moment, particularly after I had my first child, where I felt like, 'I don't ... KAREN ELSON I haven't changed. My family and I live as we did in South Spain. I've had loud music, chick... CHARO If I can stand up when I'm 80, I'll be happy to cruise around on a skateboard. If I feel lik... TONY HAWK I love home. I'll stay up there for days on end, I won't even go down the driveway to look f... DAN FOGELBERG I'll tell you - what I can tell you is that I know when I saw 'Zodiac' and then again wh... JONATHAN DEMME That's where I got my start and where I'll continue to work, but I can't tell you the nu... KELLY LYNCH I wanted to tell my story in a way I haven't done before, things I've been going through in ... BUBBA SPARXXX I don't see I'll ever arrive at the point where I'll say, 'Lance old boy, you've... BERT LANCE Some tell me I'll break my ankle on my high heels - but I live in them. I'm known for doing ... KYLIE BAX I like to sit in my backyard. I go out on the hammock and sit in silence and kind of meditate. Natur... DEVON WERKHEISER I'm the type who'd be happy not going anywhere as long as I was sure I knew exactly what was... ANDY WARHOL I like to separate the music- and lyric-writing processes if I can. I'll sort of noodle around o... LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA There was a time in L.A. when I drove to 7-Eleven to go grocery shopping, and I locked my keys in my... WHITNEY CUMMINGS It never crossed my mind to be a director, and I'll tell you why: because I'm a woman. It ju... PATRICIA RIGGEN I'll never forget my 24th birthday when my tooth got punched out. And for a second I was like, i... EVAN RACHEL WOOD I didn't want to be the archetypal sponging brother-in-law, so I didn't go into acting when ... JOHN MAHONEY Underwater, I experience space with my body. I'll see a school of fish gathering and moving toge... ANTOINE PREDOCK My parents have Google Alerts on me. So they'll often times send me an e-mail and be like, '... DANE DEHAAN I work every day hard. I put my body through hell. Let me tell you, every year, seven months of the ... MO FARAH I never make notes; just a few small details when I'm writing, but nothing much. The plot is nev... RUTH RENDELL You won't hear me talk about my politics, you won't hear me talk about my vegetarianism, you... IAN MCKELLEN A famous actor told me once - I don't want to name names, I hate that sort of thing - but I was ... SAM CLAFLIN I don't want to be one of those guys where I go there and wait a long time before I become a sta... FREDDY ADU I am just as ordinary as anyone else, and I also have my problems, but I also am responsible for my ... LARA GIDDINGS I don't care where I live, so long as there's a roof to keep the rain off my books, and high... ELIEZER YUDKOWSKY I'll sit on the floor and cry if I'm having a meltdown. I don't care. SUKI WATERHOUSE I tend to be so lost in the work that I don't notice the weather. My partner will come home and ... EMMA DONOGHUE I'll read a recipe but then decide, 'Well, it's sort of like this, then.' Or I'l... TAMSIN GREIG I don't measure my success anymore by the Grammys. I can't because I'll just end up crus... DRAKE My mom said, 'Don't get married. You're too young. Go out there and experience what life... EMMITT SMITH My favorite musical? I don't. It changes all the time. I'm just a diehard, I'm totally o... TREY PARKER I'm not like a legend that - so I'm sort of in the middle in this sort of gray area where, y... BRIAN MCKNIGHT Before long, I'll have my own channel - I'll be like Barney. DAVID HASSELHOFF If I'm not doing something or working on something, I literally just sit in the room and think, ... ADAM DRIVER St. Louis is still a special place for me. I still have my home there. I live there in the offseason... ALBERT PUJOLS Sometimes I'll go into a shop and speak in a different accent to see if I can pull it off. But t... TATIANA MASLANY I couldn't live a week without a private library - indeed, I'd part with all my furniture an... H. P. LOVECRAFT I really wish that I would have gone to college. Even my son, who's into rap himself, I tell him... BARBARA LYNN I don't have a bucket list because it is my dedication to live every day of my life there. I don... MELISSA ETHERIDGE But I'll tell you this: When I lose my athleticism, it's time to go. DOUG FLUTIE A cricket ball broke my nose when I was a kid so I couldn't breath through it. Before I had it o... DAMIAN LEWIS My parents put everything in a trust fund for me. I won't get it until I'm 18, so I'll u... HEATHER O'ROURKE I feel like some sort of fiction-writing hobo, jumping trains and always hoping I'll find a good... RAINBOW ROWELL When I eat cilantro, it's like someone sprayed perfume down my throat. It closes up my throat, e... AMBER ROSE
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 There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we misse... TOM STOPPARD Chekhov was capable of casually tossing off deplorable comments in his letters, combined with a very... TOM STOPPARD If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character's mind at that point, it ... TOM STOPPARD I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocrac... TOM STOPPARD One of the attractions of translating 'Heroes' is that it's not the kind of play that I ... TOM STOPPARD It is easily and often overlooked that when Thomas Jefferson asserted that life, liberty and the pur... TOM STOPPARD After all these years, I definitely associate having a pen in my hand with having an ashtray just ou... TOM STOPPARD Because theatre is a story-telling art form, we feel entitled to assume that the playwright got ther... TOM STOPPARD I barely remembered my father; I'm confused between genuine memory and the few photographs that ... TOM STOPPARD I'm good at being funny. TOM STOPPARD If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of... TOM STOPPARD A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, pop... TOM STOPPARD If I hadn't left Czechoslovakia, I would have been dead. TOM STOPPARD I just happen to know quite a lot of what happened in Czechoslovakia between 1968 and the fall of Co... TOM STOPPARD I went to an English school and was brought up in English. So I don't feel Czech. TOM STOPPARD The idea that being human and having rights are equivalent - that rights are inherent - is unintelli... TOM STOPPARD Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a... TOM STOPPARD Each move is dictated by the previous one--that is the meaning of order TOM STOPPARD Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are...condemned. Each move... TOM STOPPARD Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society. TOM STOPPARD The whole notion of journalism being an institution whose fundamental purpose is to educate and info... TOM STOPPARD One doesn't want one's democracy to behave like a dictatorial or fascistic police. One doesn... TOM STOPPARD Rosencrantz: Do you think death could possibly be a boat? Guildenstern: No, no, no...Death is...... TOM STOPPARD Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over... Death is not anything...de... TOM STOPPARD It's better to be quotable than to be honest. TOM STOPPARD Life in a box is better than no life at all ... I expect. TOM STOPPARD The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means. TOM STOPPARD We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on ... TOM STOPPARD Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end? TOM STOPPARD The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always ... TOM STOPPARD The days of the digital watch are numbered. TOM STOPPARD If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of... TOM STOPPARD I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity. TOM STOPPARD I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to the death your right to say it. TOM STOPPARD Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God TOM STOPPARD We're actors - we're the opposite of people. TOM STOPPARD It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting. TOM STOPPARD Pirates could happen to anyone. TOM STOPPARD Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over... Death is not anything... d... TOM STOPPARD I think I enlist comedy to a serious purpose. TOM STOPPARD That I have the right to express myself freely at all times in all circumstances entails the idea th... TOM STOPPARD In the end, my children put me on to Pink Floyd when they were teenagers. TOM STOPPARD Pink Floyd are one of a handful of bands I've listened to a lot and whose concerts I've been... TOM STOPPARD When I was younger, I could do something useful just by being free for half a day, but now I need fi... TOM STOPPARD You do know what's coming up when you're translating. I suppose the concentration, then, is ... TOM STOPPARD Life is a gamble, at terrible odds - if it was a bet you wouldn't take it. TOM STOPPARD For me, the reputation for teaching language in general, and East European languages most particular... TOM STOPPARD Like many people, I only knew of Ford Madox Ford through a book called 'The Good Soldier,' w... TOM STOPPARD A free press needs to be a respected press. TOM STOPPARD He's someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks the most interesting thing about any st... TOM STOPPARD I want to support the whole idea of the humanities and teaching the humanities as being something th... TOM STOPPARD In the period before the arrival of Mrs. Thatcher, politics had been in such low esteem. Everything ... TOM STOPPARD It is no light matter to put in jeopardy a single life when it is the very singularity of each life ... TOM STOPPARD Chater: You dare to call me that. I demand satisfaction! Septimus: Mrs Chater demanded sa... TOM STOPPARD THOMASINA: But then the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great... TOM STOPPARD Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie t... TOM STOPPARD My life feels, week to week, incomplete to the level of being pointless if I am not in preparation f... TOM STOPPARD I'm not one of those writers who insist they don't read reviews and don't care much abou... TOM STOPPARD All of my scripts are based on other people's novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who wr... TOM STOPPARD Life is a gamble, at terrible odds. If it were a bet you wouldn’t take it. TOM STOPPARD I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that a... TOM STOPPARD Lou Reed was a hero because he was an anti-hero. TOM STOPPARD Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving? TOM STOPPARD It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can w... TOM STOPPARD [Now] Bach ... a splash in the making. TOM STOPPARD What a fine persecution - to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened. TOM STOPPARD Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order you can nudge t... TOM STOPPARD If you took away everything in the world that had to be invented, there'd be nothing left except a l... TOM STOPPARD Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want. TOM STOPPARD The sense of suppression, ... or self-suppression, and pressure generally which came off even this p... TOM STOPPARD James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be un... TOM STOPPARD The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility withou... TOM STOPPARD My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other... TOM STOPPARD A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's ... TOM STOPPARD Eternity's a terrible thought TOM STOPPARD We've traveled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without poss... TOM STOPPARD We're actors. We're the opposite of people. TOM STOPPARD the bewilderment and incomprehension of critics and audience. TOM STOPPARD It's wholly deserved and I am completely thrilled. As a writer he has been unswerving for 50 years, ... TOM STOPPARD wholly deserved and I'm completely thrilled. TOM STOPPARD Every exit is an entrance somewhere else TOM STOPPARD I don't respond well to the Olympic noise, which is the noise of nationalistic triumphalism. TOM STOPPARD Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a ... TOM STOPPARD Traitors hoist by their own petard?--or victims of the gods?--we shall never know! TOM STOPPARD I shall have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love, love, love, above all. Love as there has ne... TOM STOPPARD It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to... TOM STOPPARD It would have been nice to have had unicorns. TOM STOPPARD It's where we're nearest to our humanness. Useless knowledge for its own sake. Useful knowledge is g... TOM STOPPARD It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.... A door like this has ... TOM STOPPARD Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder. In the end I gave in. That remin... TOM STOPPARD I actually went to an Oasis concert. I thought they were a brilliant songwriting band. TOM STOPPARD You can't treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires. TOM STOPPARD Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherw... TOM STOPPARD Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female ... TOM STOPPARD HANNAH: Don't let Bernard get to you. It's only performance art, you know. Rhetoric, they used to te... TOM STOPPARD Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it were a bet, you would not take it TOM STOPPARD A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier. TOM STOPPARD It is an interesting view of atheism, as a sort of "crutch" for those who can't stand the reality of... TOM STOPPARD The idea of the state is, or should be, a very limited, prescribed idea. The state looks after the d... TOM STOPPARD I have a spasm of envy for the person that was killed by a falling bookcase, as long as it doesn'... TOM STOPPARD I was an awful critic. I operated on the assumption that there was an absolute scale of values again... TOM STOPPARD What is the society we wish to protect? Is it the society of complete surveillance for the commonwea... TOM STOPPARD Even when the writing seems very frivolous, I'm puritanical. I don't mean my subject matter.... TOM STOPPARD The idea that public safety, the safety of the innocent, is an absolute which trumps every other con... TOM STOPPARD I feel overestimated. TOM STOPPARD I'm not a theoretician about playwriting, but I have a strong sense that plays have to be pitche... TOM STOPPARD We're actors — we're the opposite of people! TOM STOPPARD Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something w... TOM STOPPARD As a writer, Harold has been unswerving for 50 years, TOM STOPPARD If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any g... TOM STOPPARD I don't do interviews under false pretenses. TOM STOPPARD Despite the digital age, there is a very large number of venues and spaces that are looking for play... TOM STOPPARD I'm not like some other writers: I have no actual urgent need or desire to add to what's wri... TOM STOPPARD I've voted in every election - not always for the same political party and never with any degree... TOM STOPPARD I'm vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes. TOM STOPPARD As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an ex... TOM STOPPARD I like dialogue that is slightly more brittle than life. I have always admired and wished to write o... TOM STOPPARD When I think of how things could have turned out, I feel as if I've dodged, not just bullets, bu... TOM STOPPARD I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have... TOM STOPPARD My scripts are possibly too talkative. Sometimes I watch a scene I've written, and occasionally ... TOM STOPPARD Nobody would be killed on the roads if the speed limit were 10 miles an hour. TOM STOPPARD There we were - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man... TOM STOPPARD Theater in New York is nearer to the street. In London, you have to go deep into the building, usual... TOM STOPPARD I don't think falling in love in Slovakia is much different from falling in love in Tunbridge We... TOM STOPPARD GUIL: It [Hamlet's madness] really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mista... TOM STOPPARD A man speaking sense to himself is no madder than a man speaking nonsense not to himself. TOM STOPPARD There are certain sorts of jokes which have only to do with the substitution of the unexpected word ... TOM STOPPARD Schepisi is the sort of director who could, would, and frequently did phone me whenever he came acro... TOM STOPPARD Directors sometimes have good ideas that I wished I'd had, not on rewriting but simply on stagin... TOM STOPPARD One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that... TOM STOPPARD The fact is, I loved being English. I was very happy to be turned into an English schoolboy. TOM STOPPARD You end up going to school plays quite a bit as a parent, there are a lot of kids who are doing the ... TOM STOPPARD Free to move, speak, extemporize, and yet. We have not been cut loose. Our truancy is defined by on... TOM STOPPARD Let me get it straight. Your father was king. You were his only son. Your father dies. You are of ag... TOM STOPPARD As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don't know what death is, it is illogical to fear it... TOM STOPPARD All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and... TOM STOPPARD We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style. TOM STOPPARD Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway. Guildenstern: What? Rosencrantz: England. ... TOM STOPPARD