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" I'm not like some other writers: I have no actual urgent need or desire to add to what's written. You write it; if you're lucky, it's performed, and that's the end of the whole thing. "
Tom Stoppard
Like
Desire
End
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" I think I enlist comedy to a serious purpose. "
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" My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers. "
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" The more doors there are for you to open, the better the play. "
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" In the end, one has to feel lucky that things fell out O.K. I've felt that all the years I've been writing plays. "
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" Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want. "
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" Possibly because I did start off as a journalist, my starting point has always been that you've got to keep an audience with you. Whatever you're doing, you always want a script to be a page-turner. It's very important never, ever, to feel above that. "
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" 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
" Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end? "
Tom Stoppard
Mean
Thought
Eternity
" 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
Up
" Although I don't examine myself in this respect, I would say, off the top of my head, that I've come to acknowledge my Czechness more as I get older. "
Tom Stoppard
Head
Top
Myself
" In 2005, I got an email from Belarus Free Theatre. They were emailing playwrights in America and England announcing their existence and saying they would like support from us. I wrote back and asked if they wanted us to visit. They said, 'Yes, we'd love that.' "
Tom Stoppard
Theatre
America
Love
" 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
" 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
" I can't remember what my first script was. "
Tom Stoppard
First
Remember
Script
" I read for interest and enjoyment, and when I cease to enjoy it I stop. "
Tom Stoppard
Stop
Read
Enjoy
" Schepisi is the sort of director who could, would, and frequently did phone me whenever he came across a textual problem. "
Tom Stoppard
Phone
He
Director
" When I was a reporter in Bristol, which I was between the years 1954 and 1960, the newspaper would get tickets for whoever showed up to play a gig at the big hall down the road, so I saw some wonderful people. The Everly Brothers, for example. "
Tom Stoppard
Down
Big
Road
" I don't act, I don't direct, I don't design. "
Tom Stoppard
Direct
Act
Design
" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
More
Always
Economy
" I'm a playwright who gets involved in movies when I'm not writing a play. "
Tom Stoppard
Play
Involved
Writing
" 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
" In the end, my children put me on to Pink Floyd when they were teenagers. "
Tom Stoppard
End
Were
Teenagers
" Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them. "
Tom Stoppard
Responsibilities
Who
Person
" 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
" I take every possible side. "
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Take
Possible
Side
" I like trying to create a spark through a collaboration between me and the audience. "
Tom Stoppard
Spark
Trying
Me
" A free press needs to be a respected press. "
Tom Stoppard
Press
Free
Free Press
" My brain cells are dying in their trillions. "
Tom Stoppard
Cells
Dying
Brain Cells
" Chekhov was capable of casually tossing off deplorable comments in his letters, combined with a very modern anger against anti-Semitism. "
Tom Stoppard
Off
Anger
Against
" The truth of the matter is that I used to be much more - as it were - shy. Now I don't care! "
Tom Stoppard
Care
Now
Matter