Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.
Tom Stoppard
Related I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones... TOM STOPPARD Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order you can nudge t... TOM STOPPARD You can give words, but you can't take them. And when words are given and received, that is when the... DAVID LEVITHAN Its a funny thing, I noticed that when people are joking theyre usually dead serious, and when theyr... JIM MORRISON Decisions are the endless uncertainties of life that we'll not know if theyre right until the very e... LILY COLLINS The first duty to children is to make them happy, If you have not made them so, you have wronged the... CHARLES BUXTON The first duty to children is to make them happy. If you have not made them so, you have wronged the... CHARLES BUXTON Long-time viewing of Internet violence tend to change a person's temperament, making the person pron... YOU QUANXI If positive and healthy materials are absent, negative materials are sure to be dominant in the cybe... YOU QUANXI In a robust global business environment, our business units operated well in the first quarter. More... HARRY YOU The Board of Directors and I are pleased to recognize Peter's outstanding contribution to the succes... HARRY YOU We are pleased to close the books on 2004 following the painstaking review of almost five years of f... HARRY YOU Words can break someone into a million pieces, but they can also put them back together. I hope you ... TAYLOR SWIFT What will make you a star is in you SOTONYE ANGA Yes, a person can accept your apology and forgive you for what you’ve said, but they will never fo... STEPHANIE LAHART In order to break your child’s negative cycle, you must first break your own cycle of negative per... DANIEL BATES The words may sparkle for sometime.
The words may vanish after sometime.
but what they meant will re... SWETHA PILLAI Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get them, get them right, or they will get yo... DR. THOMAS FULLER Yes, boys are a little like shoes. Why? Well...They can be useful. But mainly...They are nice to loo... RACHEL HILL These bits of paper are covered with lies. They poison your minds. And so long as they exist, you ca... OLIVER BOWDEN What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get us... ORSON SCOTT CARD And people get all fouled up because they want the world to have meaning as if it were words... As i... ALAN W. WATTS Sticks and stones may break my bones’, as they say in the Middle Worlds, but with the right words ... JOANNE HARRIS The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes l... TERRY PRATCHETT They will hate you if you are beautiful. They will hate you if you are successful. They will hate yo... SHANNON L. ALDER If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men--you may make ... THOMAS MERTON Acting is the best job in the world... Look at the way they treat you when you turn up for work. The... BOB HOSKINS True friends are the ones who never leave your heart, even if they leave your life for awhile. Even ... ELISABETH FOLEY They're in good equipment, they've got good people working with them. . . .They should be able to ke... JEFF HAMMOND The words you do not speak are as important to the impact you make on other people as the words you ... TOM CUNNINGHAM I can build many roads and bridges, but if I don't build a road or bridge for the future of our chil... COMMISSIONER SYLVIA GARCIA When there's a last-second play, you can't get too scientific. You have to get the ball in the right... BOBBY GONZALEZ They've got other kids who are capable, so if you just worry about those two and leave the other one... JEFF CRAFT Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them? WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE When you love people, you are curious about who they are, what they think, and how they feel. You wa... VIRONIKA TUGALEVA When you love people, you are curious about who they are, what they think, and how they feel. You wa... VIRONIKA TUGALEVA If you ever feel to express proper gratitude for the good things of this life, be sure that you expr... MARY MACLANE You often love someone not for what they are, but for what you are when you are with them. JEFFREY FRY But that is how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don't have them they hate you beca... D.H. LAWRENCE If you know your fundamentals, you will enjoy the game a lot more. Some of this stuff that I show yo... ED SCHILLING I think you get a feel after a while when you watch guys as they're making blocks and can tell if th... BRYAN STINESPRING You are stronger than you think. I have weathered many storms, tragedies, and heartaches in my life�... MICHELLE MURIEL In a day,when you dont come across any problems,then you can be sure that you are travelling in the ... JOHN F. KENNEDY She's a good captain. When you are that good (at running), you get that kind of respect right off th... RALPH WHITE If you don't have to do it, and it isn't fun, then why are you doing it? It's like sometimes people ... AKIROQ BROST When beginning a conversation, ask the other person, “Do you have time to speak right now?” If t... SUSAN C. YOUNG If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you o... BARBARA MCCLINTOCK If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you o... BARBARA MCCLINTOCK In fact that is why the lives of most women are so vaguely unsatisfactory. They are always doing sec... BRENDA UELAND Splits generally are positive for stocks if theyre done at the right time. The timing on this one lo... IAN WITTERS When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have t... HILARY MANTEL They are good at beating you off the dribble. They can get penetration and if you close on them they... JODY PETERS Every generation likes to think that children don't read as much as they used to when they were ... DARREN SHAN If you look at the body of any writers' work, you can figure out the questions that animate them... ISOBELLE CARMODY My wife loves written words ... you know, words that stick to parchment and paper like dead flies, a... CORNELIA FUNKE Get the shading right, the lighting right, and there are things you can do to make the CGI look more... JON FAVREAU If you attempt certain things at the right time, they are easy to accomplish - in fact, they almost ... FRANCESCO GUICCIARDINI He's one of those guys that, when he's on, he can shut you down. And the good ones, when they get in... JOHN GIBBONS If something on the inside is telling you that someone isn’t right for you, they’re NOT right fo... MANDY HALE Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see y... ORISON SWETT MARDEN Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see... ORISON SWETT MARDEN Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see y... ORISON SWETT MARDEN All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travele... ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPéRY Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get em, get em right, or they will get you wr... THOMAS FULLER Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get 'em, get 'em right, or they will get you ... THOMAS FULLER To forgive someone is all good but if you do that to certain people they just keep doing the same th... GARY F EVANS... Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can r... ALBERT CAMUS What you want in a mentor is someone who truly cares for you and who will look after your interests ... VIVEK WADHWA Do you suppose you will look the same when you are an old woman as you do now? Most folk have three ... CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE I think the most attractive people are the confident ones, regardless of their literal appearance, s... JUSTINE BATEMAN When you create radicals, they don't stop when you want them to. The leader can order when they leav... SAEED LAYLAZ When I first started, my shots kept going right and I thought, well, this isn't that fun. But the mo... CHRIS BYRNE You're convinced that anybody who meets you for the first time will consider you a shit, so you take... MORDECAI RICHLER There is a criterion by which you can judge whether the thoughts you are thinking and the things you... PEACE PILGRIM There is a criterion by which you can judge whether the thoughts you are thinking and the things you... PEACE PILGRIM And you can't make a mistake when you are reading the Torah, so you have men standing around who... JAMI GERTZ Why just order a pizza, when you can get a restraining order for the delivery guys, make them come t... WILL ADVISE When you date someone, you have the markers along the way, right: You kiss, you have The Talk, you s... JOHN GREEN Baby," she says in a harsh whisper, "in this world, lots of people will try to grind you down. They ... HOLLY BLACK It's enough for you to do it once for a few men to remember you. But if you do it year after year, t... ERNEST HEMINGWAY When you have grace to speak kind words, declare the sacred-words. LAILAH GIFTY AKITA When we begin to set boundaries with people we love, a really hard thing happens: they hurt. They ma... HENRY CLOUD If you take goodwill for granted and get sloppy, you might get away with it once or twice, but you w... KATE KERRIGAN There are some feelings you will never find words for; you will learn to name them after the ones wh... MAZA DOHTA You are good. But it is not enough just to be good. You must be good for something. You must contrib... GORDON B. HINCKLEY With a hologram, like when your teacher is one of them, if you aren’t looking right at them, they ... M.T. ANDERSON Defenses, you can screw up but if you react and play hard, you can make up for it and you're still f... DAN PIFER i dont like when people say you know when they are in the middle of telling you something to me it g... DALLY SALAD Of course you will insist on modesty in the children, and respect to their teachers, but if the boy ... RALPH WALDO EMERSON If you're making the choice between Kleenex and Puffs, you can debate which one has more aloe in it.... NORMAN ADLER When you drink ayahuasca, and you get to see divinity, you can almost never speak of it because it�... GERARD ARMOND POWELL I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church ... GLENN BECK And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of l... MARK HADDON Good children do taste better, but there are so few of them. If you can be satisfied with naughty ch... DAVID DEMCHUK If you promise to love, trust, respect, support and stand by someone no matter what, do not just spe... CARLOS WALLACE i want to be the best i can be but when i cant i'll try my best to achieve my goal my goals in life ... DALLY SALAD Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was... JOHN GREEN People think that they are untouchable, but you will probably find that there lives are built around... GARY F EVANS... If you are the type looking to hear sweet words before you fall in love,then you are among the fooli... DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) There exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that has the power to destroy you. Anot... PHILIP K. DICK
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 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