The idea of the state is, or should be, a very limited, prescribed idea. The state looks after the defense of the… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
Poetical feelings are a peril to scholarship. There are always poetical people ready to protest that a corrupt line is exquisite. Exquisite… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
When people discuss his plays, he says that he feels like he's standing at customs watching an official ransack his luggage. He… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
The idea that all the people locked up in mental hospitals are sane while all the people walking about are mad is… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
“Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God’s crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can’t think of anything more trivial than… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
Directors sometimes have good ideas that I wished I'd had, not on rewriting but simply on staging. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
If I wanted to change the world, the last thing I would do is write a play. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
If you want to change something by Tuesday, theater is no good. Journalism is what does that. But, if you want to just alter… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
Childhood is Last Chance Gulch for happiness. After that, you know too much. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
After all these years, I definitely associate having a pen in my hand with having an ashtray just out of eye line. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
The universe is deterministic all right, just like Newton said, I mean it's trying to be, but the only thing going wrong is people… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
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.… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
“What is an artist? For every thousand people there's nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over... Death is not anything... death is not... It's the… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
For 10 years of my life, 3 times a day, I thanked the Lord for what I was about to receive and thanked him… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
You should not translate for more than two hours at a time. After that, you lose your edge, the language becomes clumsy, rigid. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
No matter how imperfect things are, if you've got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
