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" I have two garden parties a year to avoid going out to dinner. "
Tom Stoppard
Two
Going
Garden
Related Quotes:
" From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts. "
Tom Stoppard
Facts
Certainty
Truth
" You can't but know that if you can capture the emotions of the audience as well as their minds, the play will work better, because it's a narrative art form. "
Tom Stoppard
Work
Art
Know
" I would count myself as a friend of Vaclav Havel. "
Tom Stoppard
Myself
Count
Friend
" From as long as, literally as far back as I can remember I've liked puns, word jokes, I can literally recall looking at a comic at the age of six or seven and I remember what I enjoyed and what it was precisely and how the joke worked. "
Tom Stoppard
Age
Remember
Looking
" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
People
Character
Good
" I feel overestimated. "
Tom Stoppard
Feel
Overestimated
I Feel
" Childhood is Last Chance Gulch for happiness. After that, you know too much. "
Tom Stoppard
Know
You
Happiness
" James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized. "
Tom Stoppard
Recognized
Public
Man
" I'm not that taken with Freudian perspectives. They seem to be overcomplicated. "
Tom Stoppard
Perspectives
Seem
Taken
" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
Trust
Values
Against
" I am as miserable as anyone - sometimes. "
Tom Stoppard
Am
Sometimes
Miserable
" 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?' "
Tom Stoppard
Questions
Good
Thought
" Pink Floyd are one of a handful of bands I've listened to a lot and whose concerts I've been to. I love the experience. I don't dance; I just jig up and down like everybody else. "
Tom Stoppard
Experience
Dance
Up
" Nobody would be killed on the roads if the speed limit were 10 miles an hour. "
Tom Stoppard
Roads
Speed
Hour
" Chekhov understood that people are mysterious and can't be reduced to what we nowadays call 'motivation.' "
Tom Stoppard
Mysterious
People
Call
" Even when the writing seems very frivolous, I'm puritanical. I don't mean my subject matter. It's that I'm almost pathologically incapable of leaving something when I'm not quite happy with it. "
Tom Stoppard
Mean
Leaving
Matter
" I was so thrilled being a reporter, because it gave you the kind of access to people that you wouldn't ever get to meet. "
Tom Stoppard
Kind
Meet
You
" 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
" The text loses its virginity simply by being staged: it's no longer the abstract ideal version; it's an event. "
Tom Stoppard
Abstract
Event
Virginity
" In the theater there is often a tension, almost a contradiction, between the way real people would think and behave, and a kind of imposed dramaticness. "
Tom Stoppard
Way
People
Real
" My life is sectioned off into hot flushes, pursuits of this or that. "
Tom Stoppard
Off
Hot
Life
" The more doors there are for you to open, the better the play. "
Tom Stoppard
Open
Better
Doors
" Lou Reed was a hero because he was an anti-hero. "
Tom Stoppard
He
Lou Reed
Reed
" My father was a doctor in Moravia, in the south of the country. There were a number of Jewish doctors in the hospital there, and at a certain point - almost too late, really, but in time - they were all sent overseas by their employer. "
Tom Stoppard
Father
Time
Hospital
" If enough things that are untrue are said about you, no one will know what really is true. "
Tom Stoppard
You
Enough
Know
" I'm a playwright who gets involved in movies when I'm not writing a play. "
Tom Stoppard
Play
Involved
Writing
" It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting. "
Tom Stoppard
Government
Democracy
Counting
" It takes a lot of effort to be vibrant. "
Tom Stoppard
Vibrant
Effort
Takes
" Success is a sort of metaphysical experience. I live exactly as I did before - only on a slightly bigger scale. Naturally, I won't be corrupted. I'll sit there in my Rolls, uncorrupted, and tell my chauffeur, uncorruptedly, where to go. "
Tom Stoppard
Success Is
Experience
Live
" In Chekhov, everything blends into its opposite, just fractionally, and this is sort of unsettling. And that's why you end up 100 years later asking, 'Is that moment tragic or comic?' "
Tom Stoppard
End
You
Everything