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" 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.' "

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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. "

Tom Stoppard

Right

Believe

Power

" Obviously, you would give your life for your children, or give them the last biscuit on the plate. But to me, the trick in life is to take that sense of generosity between kin, make it apply to the extended family and to your neighbour, your village and beyond. "

Tom Stoppard

Children

Life

" Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text. "

" My life feels, week to week, incomplete to the level of being pointless if I am not in preparation for the next play or, ideally, into it. "

" Chekhov was capable of casually tossing off deplorable comments in his letters, combined with a very modern anger against anti-Semitism. "

" 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

" The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means. "

" I consider myself to be a very fortunate person and to have led a very fortunate life. "

" 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. "

" All of my scripts are based on other people's novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who writes for theatre. I do not see film work as a continuation of writing for theatre. It is more of an interruption of the writing process. "

" I feel that when I began writing, I had a need to know more about the play before I got into it. I think that's the way I was thinking. But my actual experience is that the best way to find out what the structure is, is by writing the play out laterally. You just have got to be brave enough to start without knowing where you are going. "

" My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers. "

" 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

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

" I am aware, as everybody has to be, that there's more competition for one's attention nowadays. "

Tom Stoppard

Attention

Competition

" I just happen to know quite a lot of what happened in Czechoslovakia between 1968 and the fall of Communism. "

" 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. "

" Writing a new play shouldn't be seen as a mystery belonging to a priesthood, but as a challenge, a technical challenge, just to get into it. "

" 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. "

" There are too many things I find it difficult to say 'no' to. "

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

" I'm vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes. "

" 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. "

" I like trying to create a spark through a collaboration between me and the audience. "

Tom Stoppard

Spark

Trying

" The thing about talking about human rights is that when one bears in mind the sharp end of it, one does not want to worry too much about semantics. "

" I write for film or, in this case, television when I haven't got a play cooking. "

" I write scenes - often quite long scenes - mainly because I still get seduced into writing six lines where one and a half will do. "

" When you write, it's making a certain kind of music in your head. There's a rhythm to it, a pulse, and on the whole, I'm writing to that drum rather than the psychological process. "

" If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older. "

" I can be affectionate about a lot of things without watching them. "