Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" It's really hard to talk about writing, and I'm usually conscious if I'm misleading people or misleading the questioner, because the problem with writing is the next line. "

" Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want. "

" Any revival in which I am involved is liable to change. "

" For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next time I write a play I will be revealed as someone who is no good at all. "

" 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?' "

" I'm not interested in clothes; I just like them. "

" I cannot say that I write with any social objective. One writes because one loves writing, really. "

" 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 don't keep a diary and I throw away nearly all the paper I might have kept. I don't keep an archive. There's something worrying about my make-up that I try to leave no trace of myself apart from my plays. "

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

" 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. "

" I get the impression sometimes that a play arrives in a sequence of events that I have no control over. "

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

" It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing. "

" To be 64 is appalling, so what does it matter being 65? "

" I don't think falling in love in Slovakia is much different from falling in love in Tunbridge Wells. "

Falling In Love

" The whole philosophy of modern times is to dissolve distinctions between individuals and deal with them as large collections of people. It's essentially self-interested on the part of authority. "

" The way 'star' used to be reserved for a small number of people, and when the star category became so vast, they came up with 'superstar,' and then they came up with 'megastar.' "

" 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. "

" I've got no interest in educating or instructing people. "

" One of the attractions of translating 'Heroes' is that it's not the kind of play that I write. If it had been, I probably wouldn't have wanted to translate it. There are no one-liners. It's much more a truthful comedy than a play of dazzling wit. "

" I don't think Stoppardian has a precise definition. "

" 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. "

" I'm hopeless at looking into myself and trying to see how things are working and why. "

" 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. "

" I'm good at being funny. "

" 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. "

" I'm offended by things and take pathetic little stands against them. "

" 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. "

" One doesn't want one's democracy to behave like a dictatorial or fascistic police. One doesn't. "