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" 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?' "

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" 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

" Nobody would be killed on the roads if the speed limit were 10 miles an hour. "

" My desk faces the water, and I'm perfectly happy sitting there. I'm never lonely. "

" I feel overestimated. "

" I really just like to be at a desk. "

Tom Stoppard

Really

Just

" Honesty is seldom ingratiating and often discomfiting. "

" The whole notion of journalism being an institution whose fundamental purpose is to educate and inform and even, one might say, elevate, has altered under commercial pressure, perhaps, into a different kind of purpose, which is to divert and distract and entertain. "

" The thing that happens remarkably often is that the people who are writing a dissertation believe they need to speak to me in order to do their dissertation. They need to interview me. "

" I've never really worked out this thought, and I don't know if I'm really conscious of it, but I can see there's an attraction about writing about a period that's over and isn't going to change colour while you look at it. "

" 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. "

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

" The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages. "

" Pink Floyd are one of a handful of bands I've listened to a lot and whose concerts I've been to. I love the experience. I don't dance; I just jig up and down like everybody else. "

Tom Stoppard

Experience

Dance

" 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. "

" I'm not that taken with Freudian perspectives. They seem to be overcomplicated. "

" I like plays where people talk a lot. Conversation is sustained. Argument is sustained. "

" 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. "

" Hotel rooms inhabit a separate moral universe. "

" One of the nice things about the world of filmmaking is that you make friends in the business. Sometimes directors feel a script needs something, but they're not sure what it is, so they show it to a friend; if the friend is a writer, he ends up kicking around with that script for a while. "

" 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

" 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. "

" I think theater ought to be theatrical. "

" It's very common for people to recommend something to me because they're going on what I've already written, when, what really is the case, is that you want to write about something you haven't written about, in ways that you haven't done before. "

" 'The Importance of Being Earnest' is important, but it says nothing about anything. "

" I have two garden parties a year to avoid going out to dinner. "

" I like pop music. I consider rock 'n' roll to be a branch of pop music. "

Tom Stoppard

Pop

Music

" Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up. "

" A free press needs to be a respected press. "

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