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" For me, the reputation for teaching language in general, and East European languages most particularly, gave Glasgow University, and by reflection the country, a distinction. "

Tom Stoppard

Language

Reflection

Reputation

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" Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. "

" I don't keep a diary and I throw away nearly all the paper I might have kept. I don't keep an archive. There's something worrying about my make-up that I try to leave no trace of myself apart from my plays. "

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

" I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon. "

" When I was a reporter in Bristol, which I was between the years 1954 and 1960, the newspaper would get tickets for whoever showed up to play a gig at the big hall down the road, so I saw some wonderful people. The Everly Brothers, for example. "

" My brain cells are dying in their trillions. "

" I can't remember what my first script was. "

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

" Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text. "

" I don't draw on my inner life in my work. "

" The whole thing about writing a play is that it's all about controlling the flow of information traveling from the stage to the audience. It's a stream of information, but you've got your hand on the tap, and you control in which order the audience receives it and with what emphasis, and how you hold it all together. "

" Fatherlessness didn't strike me as being an event. It was a state of life. "

Tom Stoppard

Being

Event

" Nobody would be killed on the roads if the speed limit were 10 miles an hour. "

" It is better to be quotable than to be honest. "

" That I have the right to express myself freely at all times in all circumstances entails the idea that free speech is a 'basic human right' possessed by each individual, and, as such, trumps the interests of the society or group, including my neighbour. "

" I don't feel that I belong anywhere. Or rather, if there's a place I belong, I don't feel I'm there. "

" The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists. "

" 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. "

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

" I like trying to create a spark through a collaboration between me and the audience. "

Tom Stoppard

Spark

Trying

" Obviously, you would give your life for your children, or give them the last biscuit on the plate. But to me, the trick in life is to take that sense of generosity between kin, make it apply to the extended family and to your neighbour, your village and beyond. "

Tom Stoppard

Children

Life

" I think probably I've been influenced by Chekhov and Walt Disney, if you see what I mean. "

" I like plays where people talk a lot. Conversation is sustained. Argument is sustained. "

" Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it. "

" I am not a mathematician, but I was aware that for centuries, mathematics was considered the queen of the sciences because it claimed certainty. It was grounded on some fundamental certainties - axioms - that led to others. "

" Everybody I know is writing plays twice a year. It's sort of making me feel I am not up to much. "