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" I don't feel like a Londoner. "
Tom Stoppard
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" When you write, it's making a certain kind of music in your head. There's a rhythm to it, a pulse, and on the whole, I'm writing to that drum rather than the psychological process. "
Tom Stoppard
Kind
You
Writing
" All of my scripts are based on other people's novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who writes for theatre. I do not see film work as a continuation of writing for theatre. It is more of an interruption of the writing process. "
Tom Stoppard
Writing
Work
Theatre
" One of the nice things about the world of filmmaking is that you make friends in the business. Sometimes directors feel a script needs something, but they're not sure what it is, so they show it to a friend; if the friend is a writer, he ends up kicking around with that script for a while. "
Tom Stoppard
Friends
World
Nice
" The whole philosophy of modern times is to dissolve distinctions between individuals and deal with them as large collections of people. It's essentially self-interested on the part of authority. "
Tom Stoppard
Authority
Philosophy
Modern
" It's really hard to talk about writing, and I'm usually conscious if I'm misleading people or misleading the questioner, because the problem with writing is the next line. "
Tom Stoppard
Talk
Problem
Line
" If you don't know what is being said, the rest of the actor's work is wasted. "
Tom Stoppard
Know
Actor
You
" I can be affectionate about a lot of things without watching them. "
Tom Stoppard
Watching
Lot
Things
" I don't want to come over as some boringly self-deprecating person. But I don't see myself as a groundbreaking writer in the way plays are structured. "
Tom Stoppard
Over
Myself
Person
" I am not somebody who meets a man or a woman somewhere and feels like that is an incredible character that I must write into a play. "
Tom Stoppard
Like
I Am
Play
" I've never really worked out this thought, and I don't know if I'm really conscious of it, but I can see there's an attraction about writing about a period that's over and isn't going to change colour while you look at it. "
Tom Stoppard
Look
Know
Writing
" One feels that the past stays the way you left it, whereas the present is in constant movement; it's unstable all around you. "
Tom Stoppard
Left
Movement
Past
" Writing a new play shouldn't be seen as a mystery belonging to a priesthood, but as a challenge, a technical challenge, just to get into it. "
Tom Stoppard
Challenge
Play
Writing
" I want to support the whole idea of the humanities and teaching the humanities as being something that - even if it can't be quantitatively measured as other subjects - it's as fundamental to all education. "
Tom Stoppard
Want
Support
Humanities
" I consider myself to be a very fortunate person and to have led a very fortunate life. "
Tom Stoppard
Very
Fortunate
Life
" Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art. "
Tom Stoppard
Skill
Without
Picnic
" I can't remember what my first script was. "
Tom Stoppard
First
Remember
Script
" A 'human right' is, by definition, timeless. It cannot adhere to some societies and not others, at some times and not at other times. "
Tom Stoppard
Right
Some
Human
" The days of the digital watch are numbered. "
Tom Stoppard
Watch
Numbered
Digital
" I'm so grateful to grab hold of something that wants to be a play. It doesn't happen very often. I don't have unwritten plays waiting for their turn. "
Tom Stoppard
Play
Grateful
Turn
" Very often in Chekhov, where he exhibits a little bit of human behavior that you recognize as true, you give a little laugh. It's like a reflex. "
Tom Stoppard
Human
Laugh
Like
" Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. "
Tom Stoppard
Theatre
Road
Obstacles
" I'm vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes. "
Tom Stoppard
Embarrassed
Sometimes
Myself
" I don't think Stoppardian has a precise definition. "
Tom Stoppard
Precise
Definition
Think
" I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory. "
Tom Stoppard
Believe
Radio
Famous
" It was a different planet in 1967, the Broadway theatre. It had a little ashtray clamped to the back of every seat and the author got 10% of the gross. "
Tom Stoppard
Back
Theatre
Got
" My life is sectioned off into hot flushes, pursuits of this or that. "
Tom Stoppard
Off
Hot
Life
" The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists. "
Tom Stoppard
Media
Sounds
Convention
" Directors sometimes have good ideas that I wished I'd had, not on rewriting but simply on staging. "
Tom Stoppard
Good
Sometimes
Ideas
" When I was younger, I could do something useful just by being free for half a day, but now I need five days to get the world I've left out of my head and ten days or a fortnight not talking to anyone to hold what I need to hold inside my head. "
Tom Stoppard
Now
World
Free
" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
Mathematics
Others
Queen