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" 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

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" When I was 20, the idea of having a play on anywhere was just beyond my dreams. "

" 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

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

" 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. "

" You are the plays you write. How on earth could you write them otherwise? They're projections of your own predilections. "

" I never had any frustration about writing uncredited. I always felt that the satisfaction of doing it was in the doing of it, really, and getting recognised by the small number of people that know what you did. "

" I'm so grateful to grab hold of something that wants to be a play. It doesn't happen very often. I don't have unwritten plays waiting for their turn. "

" 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

" I barely remembered my father; I'm confused between genuine memory and the few photographs that survived. "

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

" 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.' "

" When I was in my teens, I was very, very keen on being the author of a book. What the book was was secondary. I wanted it to be in hardback. I didn't care how thick or thin it was, and I didn't actually care what it was about. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I loved the Beatles when they turned up, and the Stones when they turned up, and never really stopped liking them. "

" Everybody I know is writing plays twice a year. It's sort of making me feel I am not up to much. "

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

" 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. "

" Chekhov understood that people are mysterious and can't be reduced to what we nowadays call 'motivation.' "

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

" Despite the digital age, there is a very large number of venues and spaces that are looking for plays, and many of them are looking for new plays. "

" I seem to be failing in my intention to be as boring as I possibly can be for self-protection. "

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

" For me, the reputation for teaching language in general, and East European languages most particularly, gave Glasgow University, and by reflection the country, a distinction. "

" The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists. "

" I think probably I've been influenced by Chekhov and Walt Disney, if you see what I mean. "

" Somebody who likes to do my plays is a good director for them. "

" Time is short, life is short, there's a lot to know. So I skip the entertainers in the newspaper now. I just haven't got time. "