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" If the audience is made to do not enough work, they resent it without knowing it. Too much and they get lost. There's a perfect pace to be found. And a perfect place that is different for every line of the play. "

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" The idea that anybody might be allowed to use their common sense when clearly no harm is being done is part of history now. "

Tom Stoppard

Sense

Done

Common Sense

" With plays that require any kind of reading program, I'm reading for a couple of years before using the material. "

" I'm not one of those writers who insist they don't read reviews and don't care much about them. I do read them, and I do care about them, and they're not always what you want them to be in an ideal world. "

" There are certain sorts of jokes which have only to do with the substitution of the unexpected word in a familiar context. If you translated something into French and then had it translated back into English by somebody who didn't know the original, you'd lose what was funny. "

" One senses that all the Bolsheviks, even those who ended up as cold-blooded autocrats, had been on a journey from idealism to something else, and didn't notice - to mix periods - when the Rubicon was crossed. "

Tom Stoppard

Senses

Something

" Like most writers, I just create because I have a story to tell, really. "

" If you don't know what is being said, the rest of the actor's work is wasted. "

" A writer doesn't really have much of a function on a movie set. "

" If enough things that are untrue are said about you, no one will know what really is true. "

" I was delighted to not go to university. I couldn't wait to be out of education. "

Tom Stoppard

Wait

Education

" The idea that being human and having rights are equivalent - that rights are inherent - is unintelligible in a Darwinian world. "

" 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. "

" To wrap up the idea of 'Parade's End' in a sentence or two, I would say it's a love story in which we see a man with two women, and we know what's attractive about them. And we know why and what they feel about him. "

" It is no light matter to put in jeopardy a single life when it is the very singularity of each life which underpins the idea of a just society. "

" One always likes to think that other countries are not like one's own. "

" Theater is still a medium which attracts young writers. You'd think that it would be all over by now, with television and film. But it's not. "

" I don't find it easy to think of good stuff to write about. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The fact is that people are attracted to new work and by new work. "

" 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?' "

" Chekhov understood that people are mysterious and can't be reduced to what we nowadays call 'motivation.' "

" What Tolstoy is on about is that carnal love is not a good idea. "

" 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. "

" I loved the Beatles when they turned up, and the Stones when they turned up, and never really stopped liking them. "

" A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier. "

" In January 1962, when I was the author of one and a half unperformed plays, I attended a student production of 'The Birthday Party' at the Victoria Rooms in Bristol. Just before it began, I realised that Harold Pinter was sitting in front of me. "

Tom Stoppard

Sitting

Birthday

" Childhood is Last Chance Gulch for happiness. After that, you know too much. "

" 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. "

" I wish I could remember how to write a play. I can't remember how they happened. "