Time Quotes by Tom Stoppard

I'm attracted to the past.

— Tom Stoppard

Other people's lives come at us without a backstory most of the time. The present is like that.

— Tom Stoppard

It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.

— Tom Stoppard

We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?

— Tom Stoppard

For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.

— Tom Stoppard

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

— Tom Stoppard

You can't go around chasing your own plays and showing up every time somebody does one somewhere. You just cross your fingers…

— Tom Stoppard

I think that the present is worth attention, one shouldn't sacrifice it to future conceptions of, of this future or that future.

— Tom Stoppard

Time is short, life is short, there's a lot to know. So I skip the entertainers in the newspaper now. I just…

— Tom Stoppard

One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original…

— Tom Stoppard

My family was in Singapore when the Japanese War started. We were in Singapore at the time of Pearl Harbor, and by…

— Tom Stoppard

In Chekhov, everything blends into its opposite, just fractionally, and this is sort of unsettling. And that's why you end up 100…

— Tom Stoppard

“There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it.”

— Tom Stoppard

Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child.…

— Tom Stoppard

They loved, and quarreled, and made up, and loved, and fought, and were true to each other and untrue. She made him…

— Tom Stoppard

If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended,…

— Tom Stoppard

Underneath runs the main current of preoccupation, which is keeping one's nose clean at all times. This means that when things go…

— Tom Stoppard

“HANNAH: Don't let Bernard get to you. It's only performance art, you know. Rhetoric, they used to teach it in ancient times,…

— Tom Stoppard

Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it…

— Tom Stoppard

The notion that the 'leader' has the right to ask huge sacrifices of your generation for a notional future paradise - if…

— 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

“Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood, when it…

— Tom Stoppard

“Independence isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know. What country could be more independent than Russia? And in Russia now…

— Tom Stoppard

“Why do I have a sense of impending disaster? (He reflects) Sonders is after my niece and has discovered the secret address…

— Tom Stoppard

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…

— Tom Stoppard

The whole philosophy of modern times is to dissolve distinctions between individuals and deal with them as large collections of people. It's…

— Tom Stoppard

There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it.

— 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

“Inside where nothing shows, I am the essence of a man spinning double-headed coins, and betting against himself in private atonement for…

— Tom Stoppard

There is presumably a calendar date a moment when the onus of proof passed from the atheist to the believer, when, quite…

— 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

For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next…

— 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

For 10 years of my life, 3 times a day, I thanked the Lord for what I was about to receive and…

— Tom Stoppard

We've traveled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of…

— Tom Stoppard

You should not translate for more than two hours at a time. After that, you lose your edge, the language becomes clumsy,…

— Tom Stoppard

Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder. In the end I gave in. That reminds me—I…

— Tom Stoppard

"The [London] Times" has published no rumours; it's only reported facts, namely that other, less responsible papers are publishing certain rumours.

— Tom Stoppard

That I have the right to express myself freely at all times in all circumstances entails the idea that free speech is…

— Tom Stoppard

“Free to move, speak, extemporize, and yet. We have not been cut loose. Our truancy is defined by one fixed star, and our drift…

— Tom Stoppard