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" Why should I write a play? I don't have to write a play, do I? But somehow, I think that's what I'm here for, so I'd better do it. "
Tom Stoppard
Why
Write
Better
Related Quotes:
" I wanted to be in the theater. It is simply the way I felt. "
Tom Stoppard
Simply
Way
Felt
" My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers. "
Tom Stoppard
Questions
Life
Whole
" The idea that public safety, the safety of the innocent, is an absolute which trumps every other consideration, is tacitly abandoned in the way we live. "
Tom Stoppard
Live
Way
Safety
" I adopted England as least as much as England adopted me. "
Tom Stoppard
Me
Least
England
" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
Age
Number
New
" I like the notion of theater as recreational. "
Tom Stoppard
Notion
Theater
Recreational
" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
Tomorrow
Words
Attitude
" I barely remembered my father; I'm confused between genuine memory and the few photographs that survived. "
Tom Stoppard
Few
Father
Confused
" Lou Reed was a hero because he was an anti-hero. "
Tom Stoppard
He
Lou Reed
Reed
" In my mind, I always knew what my father looked like. "
Tom Stoppard
Father
Always
Knew
" We're actors. We're the opposite of people. "
Tom Stoppard
People
Opposite
" 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
" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
Reading
Time
I Am
" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
Look
Know
Writing
" A publisher many years ago asked if I'd like to write a novel for £50. And I said, 'Absolutely.' "
Tom Stoppard
Absolutely
Said
Like
" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
Back
Theatre
Got
" A 'human right' is, by definition, timeless. It cannot adhere to some societies and not others, at some times and not at other times. "
Tom Stoppard
Right
Some
Human
" Chekhov was capable of casually tossing off deplorable comments in his letters, combined with a very modern anger against anti-Semitism. "
Tom Stoppard
Off
Anger
Against
" Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them. "
Tom Stoppard
Responsibilities
Who
Person
" A writer doesn't really have much of a function on a movie set. "
Tom Stoppard
Writer
Really
Function
" I think theater ought to be theatrical. "
Tom Stoppard
Ought
Think
Theater
" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
Life
Think
You
" Embarrassingly enough, I often can't remember how I came to write something. "
Tom Stoppard
How
Enough
Write
" When you try to grasp the way the Western world is going, you see that we are on a ratchet towards a surveillance state, which is coming to include the whole population in its surveillance. This is our reward for accepting the restraints on the way we live now. "
Tom Stoppard
Try
World
See
" 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. "
Tom Stoppard
Play
Grateful
Turn
" I don't respond well to the Olympic noise, which is the noise of nationalistic triumphalism. "
Tom Stoppard
Well
Olympic
Noise
" My scripts are possibly too talkative. Sometimes I watch a scene I've written, and occasionally I think, 'Oh, for God's sake, shut up.' "
Tom Stoppard
Sometimes
Watch
God
" Hotel rooms inhabit a separate moral universe. "
Tom Stoppard
Universe
Rooms
Moral
" Writing a new play shouldn't be seen as a mystery belonging to a priesthood, but as a challenge, a technical challenge, just to get into it. "
Tom Stoppard
Challenge
Play
Writing
" It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing. "
Tom Stoppard
Things
Better
Know