There are certain sorts of jokes which have only to do with the substitution of the unexpected word in a familiar context. If you translated something into French and then had it translated back into English by somebody who didn't know the original, you'd lose what was funny.


Tom Stoppard

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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
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