Tom Stoppard

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

— Tom Stoppard

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

— Tom Stoppard

“As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don't know what death is, it is illogical to fear it.”

— Tom Stoppard

One feels that the past stays the way you left it, whereas the present is in constant movement; it's unstable all around…

— Tom Stoppard

Schepisi is the sort of director who could, would, and frequently did phone me whenever he came across a textual problem.

— Tom Stoppard

“Player: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.”

— Tom Stoppard

Back in the East you can't do much without the right papers, but with the right papers you can do anything The…

— Tom Stoppard

Let me get it straight. Your father was king. You were his only son. Your father dies. You are of age. Your…

— Tom Stoppard

“I learned three things in Zurich during the war. I wrote them down. Firstly, you’re either a revolutionary or you’re not, and…

— Tom Stoppard

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order,…

— Tom Stoppard

Theater in New York is nearer to the street. In London, you have to go deep into the building, usually, to reach…

— Tom Stoppard

I love love. I love having a lover and being one. The insularity of passion. I love it. I love the way…

— Tom Stoppard

My father was a doctor in Moravia, in the south of the country. There were a number of Jewish doctors in the…

— Tom Stoppard

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order,…

— Tom Stoppard

One of the nice things about the world of filmmaking is that you make friends in the business. Sometimes directors feel a…

— Tom Stoppard

A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never…

— Tom Stoppard

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music…

— Tom Stoppard

When we have found all the meanings and lost all the mysteries, we will be alone, on an empty shore.

— Tom Stoppard

A 'human right' is, by definition, timeless. It cannot adhere to some societies and not others, at some times and not at…

— Tom Stoppard

My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I…

— Tom Stoppard

I doubt that art needed Ruskin any more than a moving train needs one of its passengers to shove it.

— Tom Stoppard

It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.

— Tom Stoppard

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

— Tom Stoppard

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk…

— Tom Stoppard

I am not somebody who meets a man or a woman somewhere and feels like that is an incredible character that I…

— Tom Stoppard

The possibilities are infinite with new writing; every time you open a new script, there's no limit to what it might contain.

— Tom Stoppard

Directors sometimes have good ideas that I wished I'd had, not on rewriting but simply on staging.

— Tom Stoppard

I've voted in every election - not always for the same political party and never with any degree of enthusiasm.

— Tom Stoppard

The names for things don't come first. Words stagger after, hopelessly trying to become the sensation.

— Tom Stoppard

I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.

— Tom Stoppard

A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.

— Tom Stoppard

You're familiar with the tragedies of antiquity, are you? The great homicidal classics?

— Tom Stoppard

“The strongest, the most certain thing I think I know about the process is there is really, really good news if you…

— Tom Stoppard

...and for the last three minutes on the wind of a windless day I have heard the sound of drums and flute...

— Tom Stoppard

I wish I could remember how to write a play. I can't remember how they happened.

— Tom Stoppard

What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

— Tom Stoppard

James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.

— Tom Stoppard

My life feels, week to week, incomplete to the level of being pointless if I am not in preparation for the next…

— Tom Stoppard

After all these years, I definitely associate having a pen in my hand with having an ashtray just out of eye line.

— Tom Stoppard

If you took away everything in the world that had to be invented, there'd be nothing left except a lot of people…

— Tom Stoppard