We're actors — we're the opposite of people!
Tom Stoppard
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Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a ...
TOM STOPPARD 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 We're actors - we're the opposite of people.
TOM STOPPARD We're actors. We're the opposite of people.
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 We have actors from other films, from 'Baywatch,' and so on, and these people are looking ex...
JOE VITERELLI If you're doing something like 'Arcadia' by Tom Stoppard, which has been done millions a...
BEL POWLEY I was at a dinner party many years ago,sitting along from Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not...
STEPHEN FRY We were like bishops of opposite color.
BORIS SPASSKY The crossover wasn't happening. TV actors were TV actors, and film and stage actors were a whole...
CHRISTINE LAHTI Tom Hiddleston is so fucking nice. It used to be in the past you were either nice, or you were good-...
GUILLERMO DEL TORO A lot of male actors are method actors and they become the characters which they both were.
IZABELLA SCORUPCO I mean, the actors that I admired were Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, an actress named Barbara Har...
ROBERT DE NIRO I think some of the best actors ever were little kids.
JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT Actors were exploited no less by the capitalist managers than they were by the state.
BELA LUGOSI I think a lot of theater actors that were great, like Walken or Glenn Close, later became film actor...
SAM ROCKWELL So much of our work in Iraq has dealt with talking to families of people taken prisoner. Our work is...
CLIFF KINDY A producer is always behind the scenes, even more in the movies - nobody sees you. I didn't even...
GIORGIO MORODER It would be bizarre if we were to adopt a position of silence when countries like Germany were movin...
DAVID CAMERON Everyone today is so laid-back and cool and it's kinda boring, but Tom is the opposite of that,
ANTHONY HOPKINS My influences were Peter Sellers and the great British character actors.
TRACEY ULLMAN He wondered at the atrocities human kind was capable of committing. The majority of those housed bel...
BRYNN CHAPMAN We were considered the weak link last September. This year, it's the opposite.
DAVID CASTILLO I think all those actors from that generation, like Bogart - they were wonderful actors. They didn...
ANTHONY HOPKINS Some people do stage and film. Some people are film actors, and some people are stage actors. I'...
TRACY LETTS The '80s were a time of technical wonder in filmmaking; unfortunately, some colleges didn't ...
ERIC STOLTZ I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation. •George Bernard Shaw It is better ...
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW My actors and crew were miserable working in that desert.
ROBERT HALMI SR Actors speak of things imaginary as if they were real, while your preachers too often speak of thing...
THOMAS BETTERTON Tom was immense tonight and all his shots were big ones for us.
BOB FARIAS For us, as actors, and even for the director, it gave us a sense of authenticity to what we were doi...
BERENICE BEJO The kids were giving the hepatitis A virus to mom, dad and Uncle Tom. And so if they didn't get the ...
WILLIAM SCHAFFNER The kids were giving the hepatitis A virus to mom, dad and Uncle Tom. And so if they didn't get the ...
DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER Even if I hadn't been cast as Doctor Who, my acting would probably have been influenced by Willi...
PETER CAPALDI The actors I admired were Bogart, Cagney, Cooper, Tracy. Great personalities. Real stars.
JEAN-PAUL BELMONDO There were no Indian actors from England of note earning money or having a career.
NAVEEN ANDREWS Let him who walks in darkness and no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God
PEOPLE OF CHRIST Most child actors were lucky enough to get the part in the first place.
DANNY BONADUCE When Secretary (Tom) Ridge was here, everyone was saying we were rated triple-A.
LENNY KLOMPUS Only after the last tree has been cut down,only after the last river has been poisoned,only after th...
THE CREE PEOPLE There are maybe 100 actors I look up to, but my first two favourite actors were Dustin Hoffman and J...
PAUL DANO Actors then were just louts, hangabouts and wandering troubadours doing traveling plays,
RAY STEVENSON Actors are becoming smarter about retirement than they were five years ago.
CONARD FOWKES I just don't think he understands how dehumanizing his comments were to gay and lesbian people and h...
RAND HOCH During our first year we were up here, Tom thought he had to read all the bills.
DONNA COURTNEY Knowing who the actors were as you were designing them helped, with Catherine's beauty and Renee...
COLLEEN ATWOOD On the opposite side, the mannequins stood like witnesses. They were serious and ludicrously stylish...
MARKUS ZUSAK They were so big, that we were taking off on different ends - long peaks - and you're just passing e...
GEORGE DOWNING Raegan and I were on the opposite side of town, strutting across the gravel lot of the Red Door, slo...
JAMIE MCGUIRE It is about time that TV actors were paid as well as film stars.
MONA SINGH I was reading a book and found myself crashing into the person opposite me. The train was going over...
MARK ROGERS People are always talking about the old days. They say that the old movies were better, that the old...
KIRK DOUGLAS There are so many stage actors on TV but you wouldn't know they were stage actors. And film and ...
MATTHEW MORRISON Paul and I were both struggling actors. One night he would serve me in a restaurant, and the next ni...
DAVID SOUL What we're seeing is the opposite of two years ago, when every Tom, Dick and Harry was in the market...
PETER CARDILLO We think this system may have gotten material from two clouds instead of one, and the two were rotat...
ANTHONY REMIJAN One reason we lasted so long is that we usually played two people who were very much in love. As we ...
LYNN FONTANNE The reaction of the fans being on the field and then seeing how you kind of want it to come out, the...
BRADY QUINN When I started in the profession, there were very visible actors who were Scottish, Welsh, or region...
TOM HOLLANDER If I were (U.S. Senate Democratic leader Sen.) Tom Daschle and that crowd, I wouldn't assume anythin...
DICK HARPOOTLIAN The writers and actors on 'Friends' were notoriously particular about what made it onto the ...
WARREN LITTLEFIELD I knew Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were really talented. As actors, they were both studly young men, ...
ROBIN WILLIAMS As an actress, I always felt like the people you met on set were interchangeable with the people you...
BROOKE ADAMS I remember a conversation with my parents about who the people on the TV were, and learning they wer...
DAVID TENNANT On late ex-wife Paula Yates and her lover Michael Hutchence: They thought they were Mick Jagger and ...
BOB GELDOF With 'The Simpsons,' people didn't know what they were gonna see. They didn't have a...
SAM SIMON We were captivated by Tom when we first saw him on his Canadian show. The talk show with a twist is ...
JOHN MILLER As much as most of the actors were kind of curious to know what their character meant in relation to...
RADHA MITCHELL I would always slip away to the cinema. I always found something absolutely extraordinary about the ...
GEOFFREY RUSH The people that were there were the people that we were hoping to get there.
JOSE OCHOA "Learn from yesterdays mistakes, Live today as if it were our last, Keep continued hope for tomorrow...
TOM BAKER AKA THE PONDERING MAN Tom shut his eyes again, because when his eyes were shut, he could tell himself that there was light...
N.D. WILSON It was difficult for the Japanese actors. I had to keep explaining to them why we were depicting the...
ALEXANDER SOKUROV The 800-pound gorillas of TV news are gone. When I was the White House correspondent at NBC, and Tom...
CAMPBELL BROWN Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.
COCO CHANEL The difference between my generation of actors and their generation is that they were bigger than li...
BRUCE DERN The year I got into The Actors Studio, Steve McQueen and I were the only two accepted that whole yea...
MARTIN LANDAU In 'The Hobbit,' there were British, Irish, Australian and New Zealand actors, and Peter Jac...
AIDAN TURNER Tom Rumph had a good day in all the jumps and Nate Culver in his 1600 and 800 were both good perform...
CHARLIE HUGHES I made a statement before that there were no good actors up here. I eat my words.
ROBERT DUVALL We were only there for five days and during that time Tom was a bit annoyed that the French were mor...
LALLA WARD A lot of people were cheering us up when we were up there. They were laughing, dancing. They were ni...
DAX MAIER Both of my parents have been actors; there were a lot of show tunes on in the car all of the time. I...
DANIEL RADCLIFFE We were on the front side of the house. And we were just starting to put shingles down on the roof. ...
BRANDON GILBERT The forecasting comparisons for soybeans were somewhat sensitive to the measure of forecast accuracy...
DARREL GOOD The forecasting comparisons for soybeans were somewhat sensitive to the measure of forecast accuracy...
DARREL GOOD There's that stigma about New Yorkers, how they're so mean, but in my experience it was quit...
TAYLOR KITSCH That first dual was one of the worst performances we've had in a long time. We were pretty flat. The...
JEFF COURTRIGHT Even the greatest actors have had dry spells where they've wondered if they were going to work a...
BENJAMIN WALKER Tom Welter (the OSAA executive director) told me they were getting a hearings officer ready to go (t...
DON ALEXANDER Several teams were interested, but his agent ( Tom Condon ) told him to rest and wait for the right ...
GREG COUCH There we were - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man...
TOM STOPPARD My favorite actors when I was a kid were in their '60s. Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, John Way...
JOSEPH BOLOGNA Actors do tend to get pigeonholed. People want to know who you are so they can put you in a box. It&...
TOM HIDDLESTON When we saw the strategies that actors used for acquiring a script and so forth, they unwittingly us...
TONY NOICE I've worked with some terrific actors. The list of guys that came on the 'Columbo' show,...
PETER FALK In 1993 we had an economy coming out of recession, we had unsustainable budget deficits in the proje...
MAX SAWICKY When I was younger, the athletes who motivated me were the ones I saw on TV-Billy Mills, Gerry Lindg...
BILL RODGERS The vehicles and the people - you just would not believe the people. People were crying because thei...
CLAY HOBBS
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 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