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" 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?' "

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" 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

" Because theatre is a story-telling art form, we feel entitled to assume that the playwright got there before we got there. "

" Life is a gamble, at terrible odds - if it was a bet you wouldn't take it. "

" A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there. "

" 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

Desire

End

" Theatre probably originated without texts, but by the time we get to the classical Greek period, theatre has become text-based. "

" When I was 20, in 1957, and maybe you would say I was old enough to know better, but nevertheless, I was completely nuts about Buddy Holly. And I loved pop bands that had absolutely no intellectual pretensions whatsoever. I loved the Monkees. "

" If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life. "

" You don't often get a proposal to do Tolstoy for a really interesting director - that's easy to say yes to. "

" From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts. "

" If I wanted to change the world, the last thing I would do is write a play. "

" 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

" Quite early on, and certainly since I started writing, I found that philosophical questions occupied me more than any other kind. I hadn't really thought of them as being philosophical questions, but one rapidly comes to an understanding that philosophy's only really about two questions: 'What is true?' and 'What is good?' "

" If I hadn't left Czechoslovakia, I would have been dead. "

" If I had been asked to write 1,200 words for a newspaper tomorrow, on any subject, I would just do it rather than leave a white hole in the page. And I think it's a very healthy attitude to take to writing anything. "

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

" As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that. "

" When I think of how things could have turned out, I feel as if I've dodged, not just bullets, but 6mm shells. "

" Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them. "

" I don't do interviews under false pretenses. "

" 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. "

" I always loved rock 'n' roll. "

" The fact is, I loved being English. I was very happy to be turned into an English schoolboy. "

" I'm vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes. "

" I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen. "

" The whole excitement for writing anything is quite intense. And for a day or two, you think you've done everything extremely well. The problems start on the third day, and continues for the rest of your life. "

" I think of myself as a theater animal instead of an intellectual animal. "

" I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon. "

" Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society. "

" We're actors. We're the opposite of people. "

Tom Stoppard

People

Opposite