I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I wish I could remember how to write a play. I can't remember how they happened. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I'm a playwright who gets involved in movies when I'm not writing a play. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
When I was 20, the idea of having a play on anywhere was just beyond my dreams. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I get the impression sometimes that a play arrives in a sequence of events that I have no control over. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I write for film or, in this case, television when I haven't got a play cooking. — 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
I am not somebody who meets a man or a woman somewhere and feels like that is an incredible character that I… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
Having translated two plays by Chekhov, and not speaking Russian myself - I cannot say one sentence. This may shock people... However,… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
My life feels, week to week, incomplete to the level of being pointless if I am not in preparation for the next… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
When 'The Dark Side of the Moon' was a new album in 1973, a friend of mine walked into my room where… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
A play that works well and is done quite a lot - I've never done the math - but it's probably more… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
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… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
You can't but know that if you can capture the emotions of the audience as well as their minds, the play will… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I shall have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love, love, love, above all. Love as there has never been in… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
One of the attractions of translating 'Heroes' is that it's not the kind of play that I write. If it had been,… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
My intention still is to write a play to commemorate, possibly rather skeptically, the 50th anniversary of the Russian revolution. I started… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character's mind at that point, it may not… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
When I was a reporter in Bristol, which I was between the years 1954 and 1960, the newspaper would get tickets for… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
If the audience is made to do not enough work, they resent it without knowing it. Too much and they get lost.… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
To the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into one of two categories: (1) things that need to be… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I feel that when I began writing, I had a need to know more about the play before I got into it.… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
“We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be… — 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
'Arcadia' is obviously a play that's got interesting things in it that are perhaps quite hard to grasp. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I don't keep a diary and I throw away nearly all the paper I might have kept. I don't keep an archive.… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
Writing a new play shouldn't be seen as a mystery belonging to a priesthood, but as a challenge, a technical challenge, just… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
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… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put a position, rebut it, refute the… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
Writing a play is like smashing that [glass] ashtray, filming it in slow motion, and then running the film in reverse, so… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
The whole thing about writing a play is that it's all about controlling the flow of information traveling from the stage to… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
In January 1962, when I was the author of one and a half unperformed plays, I attended a student production of 'The… — 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
![“Writing a play is like smashing that [glass] ashtray, filming it in slow motion, and then running the film in reverse, so that the fragments of rubble appear to fly together. You start - or at least I start - with the rubble.” quote by Tom Stoppard](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/271/tom-stoppard-437_ashtrays_writing-a-play-is-like-smashing-that-gla_733373.jpg)
