Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that. "

Related Quotes:

" It is easily and often overlooked that when Thomas Jefferson asserted that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were inalienable human rights, he did so on the ground that they had been endowed by God, our Creator. "

Tom Stoppard

Happiness

Life

Rights

" The text loses its virginity simply by being staged: it's no longer the abstract ideal version; it's an event. "

" Quite early on, and certainly since I started writing, I found that philosophical questions occupied me more than any other kind. I hadn't really thought of them as being philosophical questions, but one rapidly comes to an understanding that philosophy's only really about two questions: 'What is true?' and 'What is good?' "

" I proudly tell people, 'I have no computer,' so as not to be ashamed of having no computer. "

" Theater in New York is nearer to the street. In London, you have to go deep into the building, usually, to reach the place where theater happens. On Broadway, only the fire doors separate you from the sidewalk, and you're lucky if the sound of a police car doesn't rip the envelope twice a night. "

" I am as miserable as anyone - sometimes. "

Tom Stoppard

Sometimes

Miserable

" Back in the East you can't do much without the right papers, but with the right papers you can do anything The believe in papers. Papers are power. "

" If I had been asked to write 1,200 words for a newspaper tomorrow, on any subject, I would just do it rather than leave a white hole in the page. And I think it's a very healthy attitude to take to writing anything. "

" I seem to be failing in my intention to be as boring as I possibly can be for self-protection. "

" Why should I write a play? I don't have to write a play, do I? But somehow, I think that's what I'm here for, so I'd better do it. "

" I went to an English school and was brought up in English. So I don't feel Czech. "

" You should not translate for more than two hours at a time. After that, you lose your edge, the language becomes clumsy, rigid. "

" I don't feel like a Londoner. "

Tom Stoppard

Feel

" My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful. "

" You can't go around chasing your own plays and showing up every time somebody does one somewhere. You just cross your fingers and hope that they're OK. "

Tom Stoppard

Own

Hope

" I'm hopeless at looking into myself and trying to see how things are working and why. "

" Life in a box is better than no life at all... I expect. "

" A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there. "

" I was an awful critic. I operated on the assumption that there was an absolute scale of values against which art could be measured. I didn't trust my own subjective responses. "

" Like almost everything else from the West, the Romantic Revolution arrived late in Russia. "

" It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting. "

" I'm not a theoretician about playwriting, but I have a strong sense that plays have to be pitched - the scene, the line, the word - at the exact point where the audience has just the right amount of information. It's like Occam's razor. "

" The truth of the matter is that I used to be much more - as it were - shy. Now I don't care! "

" If I wanted to change the world, the last thing I would do is write a play. "

" If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character's mind at that point, it may not turn out to be a very good play, but at least it will be a play where people are behaving in a kind of truthful way. "

" There are many, many more small theater spaces than there were when I was starting out. "

" The printed word is no longer as in demand as when I was of the age of pupils or even at the age of the teachers teaching them. "

" I don't think falling in love in Slovakia is much different from falling in love in Tunbridge Wells. "

" I adopted England as least as much as England adopted me. "

Tom Stoppard

Least

England

" Like many people, I only knew of Ford Madox Ford through a book called 'The Good Soldier,' which is everybody's favorite Ford Madox Ford if they have one, but I came to read 'Parade's End' when it was suggested via Damien Timmer of Mammoth Screen. "

Tom Stoppard

Good

Soldier