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" When 'The Dark Side of the Moon' was a new album in 1973, a friend of mine walked into my room where I was working with a copy in his hand and said, 'You really have to do a play about this album.' "

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" Theater in New York is nearer to the street. In London, you have to go deep into the building, usually, to reach the place where theater happens. On Broadway, only the fire doors separate you from the sidewalk, and you're lucky if the sound of a police car doesn't rip the envelope twice a night. "

Tom Stoppard

Deep

Night

New York

" You end up going to school plays quite a bit as a parent, there are a lot of kids who are doing the job as well as they can, but there's always one or two who seem much more at home in the world of impersonation. "

" When Auden said his poetry didn't save one Jew from the gas chamber, he'd said it all. "

" I read for interest and enjoyment, and when I cease to enjoy it I stop. "

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

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

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

" A writer doesn't really have much of a function on a movie set. "

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

Tom Stoppard

Decision

Get

" I'm attracted to the past. "

Tom Stoppard

Past

Attracted

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

" It was a different planet in 1967, the Broadway theatre. It had a little ashtray clamped to the back of every seat and the author got 10% of the gross. "

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

" I was so thrilled being a reporter, because it gave you the kind of access to people that you wouldn't ever get to meet. "

" Like many people, I only knew of Ford Madox Ford through a book called 'The Good Soldier,' which is everybody's favorite Ford Madox Ford if they have one, but I came to read 'Parade's End' when it was suggested via Damien Timmer of Mammoth Screen. "

Tom Stoppard

Good

Soldier

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

" From as long as, literally as far back as I can remember I've liked puns, word jokes, I can literally recall looking at a comic at the age of six or seven and I remember what I enjoyed and what it was precisely and how the joke worked. "

" 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. "

" You can't go around chasing your own plays and showing up every time somebody does one somewhere. You just cross your fingers and hope that they're OK. "

Tom Stoppard

Own

Hope

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

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

" 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. "

" I take every possible side. "

" I write out of my intellectual experience. "

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

" You do know what's coming up when you're translating. I suppose the concentration, then, is on finding a formulation which is speakable and in character - and economical as well, actually. "

" I'm aware of my old plays and occasionally think about them, but I'm much more anxious about finding the next play. "

Tom Stoppard

Old

Think

" 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. "

" A publisher many years ago asked if I'd like to write a novel for £50. And I said, 'Absolutely.' "

Tom Stoppard

Absolutely

Said