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" I wish I could remember how to write a play. I can't remember how they happened. "
Tom Stoppard
Write
Remember
Play
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" I'm a conservative kind of person. I don't think rightwing is quite the same thing. But I acknowledge my conservatism of temperament. "
Tom Stoppard
Kind
Think
Same
" James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized. "
Tom Stoppard
Recognized
Public
Man
" For me, human rights simply endorse a view of life and a set of moral values that are perfectly clear to an eight-year-old child. A child knows what is fair and isn't fair, and justice derives from that knowledge. "
Tom Stoppard
Child
Justice
Knowledge
" 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
" I write for film or, in this case, television when I haven't got a play cooking. "
Tom Stoppard
Television
Cooking
Write
" Lou Reed was a hero because he was an anti-hero. "
Tom Stoppard
He
Lou Reed
Reed
" Life is a gamble, at terrible odds - if it was a bet you wouldn't take it. "
Tom Stoppard
Terrible
Life
Odds
" I think probably I've been influenced by Chekhov and Walt Disney, if you see what I mean. "
Tom Stoppard
Think
Been
I Think
" When Auden said his poetry didn't save one Jew from the gas chamber, he'd said it all. "
Tom Stoppard
Jew
Poetry
Said
" 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
" When I was 20, the idea of having a play on anywhere was just beyond my dreams. "
Tom Stoppard
Having
Beyond
Dreams
" My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers. "
Tom Stoppard
Questions
Life
Whole
" I don't know that I want to share all my most intimate secrets. "
Tom Stoppard
Most
Know
Secrets
" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
Order
Beauty
Certainty
" Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self. "
Tom Stoppard
Deep
Think
Self
" What is the society we wish to protect? Is it the society of complete surveillance for the commonwealth? Is this the wealth we seek to have in common - optimal security at the cost of maximal surveillance? "
Tom Stoppard
Wish
Protect
Society
" I would count myself as a friend of Vaclav Havel. "
Tom Stoppard
Myself
Count
Friend
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
Information
Audience
Right
" Good things, when short, are twice as good. "
Tom Stoppard
Short
Good
Good Things
" I think I enlist comedy to a serious purpose. "
Tom Stoppard
Think
Comedy
I Think
" The fact is, I loved being English. I was very happy to be turned into an English schoolboy. "
Tom Stoppard
English
Very
Loved
" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
Reading
Time
I Am
" 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
" 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
" The more doors there are for you to open, the better the play. "
Tom Stoppard
Open
Better
Doors
" I like trying to create a spark through a collaboration between me and the audience. "
Tom Stoppard
Spark
Trying
Me
" It is better to be quotable than to be honest. "
Tom Stoppard
Than
To Be Honest
Better