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" I wanted to be in the theater. It is simply the way I felt. "
Tom Stoppard
Simply
Way
Felt
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" Life in a box is better than no life at all... I expect. "
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" I don't look at my work in a critical or analytical way; I just don't think of myself objectively. It doesn't interest me. "
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" Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end? "
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" 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. "
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" I read for interest and enjoyment, and when I cease to enjoy it I stop. "
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" I like pop music. I consider rock 'n' roll to be a branch of pop music. "
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" As a child, I was airlifted out of the path of the Nazis. Unfortunately, I was parachuted into the path of the Japanese, but then I was airlifted again to India. "
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Child
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" I think journalism is important. "
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I Think
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" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
Choose
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True
" 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. "
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Order
Beauty
Certainty
" Nobody would be killed on the roads if the speed limit were 10 miles an hour. "
Tom Stoppard
Roads
Speed
Hour
" The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages. "
Tom Stoppard
Responsibility
Illusion
Power
" 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. "
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Believe
Radio
Famous
" I'm vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes. "
Tom Stoppard
Embarrassed
Sometimes
Myself
" A publisher many years ago asked if I'd like to write a novel for £50. And I said, 'Absolutely.' "
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Absolutely
Said
Like
" I don't feel that I belong anywhere. Or rather, if there's a place I belong, I don't feel I'm there. "
Tom Stoppard
Anywhere
Rather
Place
" 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
" It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing. "
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Things
Better
Know
" Theatre probably originated without texts, but by the time we get to the classical Greek period, theatre has become text-based. "
Tom Stoppard
Get
Without
Theatre
" If I am on a journey where I only have time to read one-and-a-half books, I never know which one-and-a-half I'll feel like reading. So I bring eight. "
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Time
I Am
" 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. "
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Control
Information
Writing
" I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation. "
Tom Stoppard
Dialogue
Way
Write
" I think I give the impression of being a romantic, and I think inside I'm quite severe. But some might say they had the opposite impression of me. "
Tom Stoppard
Say
Think
Romantic
" I like dialogue that is slightly more brittle than life. I have always admired and wished to write one of those 1940s film scripts where every line is written with a sharpness and economy that is frankly artificial. "
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More
Always
Economy
" Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want. "
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Decision
Get
Me
" You should not translate for more than two hours at a time. After that, you lose your edge, the language becomes clumsy, rigid. "
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Lose
Edge
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" The thing that happens remarkably often is that the people who are writing a dissertation believe they need to speak to me in order to do their dissertation. They need to interview me. "
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Speak
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" 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. "
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Right
Believe
Power
" Chekhov was capable of casually tossing off deplorable comments in his letters, combined with a very modern anger against anti-Semitism. "
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Off
Anger
Against