The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I will take his secret to the grave, telling people I meet on the way. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I write fiction because it's a way of making statements I can disown. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
The way 'star' used to be reserved for a small number of people, and when the star category became so vast, they… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
In the theater there is often a tension, almost a contradiction, between the way real people would think and behave, and a… — 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
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 Copy Share Image
I don't want to come over as some boringly self-deprecating person. But I don't see myself as a groundbreaking writer in the… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
The idea that public safety, the safety of the innocent, is an absolute which trumps every other consideration, is tacitly abandoned in… — 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
Once rehearsals are done the writer really doesn't have a function on the set. If the script is stabilized, then the writer… — 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
When you try to grasp the way the Western world is going, you see that we are on a ratchet towards a… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
It's probably unprecedented for a filmmaker simply to take the writers' script and treat it as the instructions on the package. What… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
The trouble is, I can't find a part of myself where you're not important. I write in order to be worth your… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I think theater ought to be theatrical ... you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it's -- there's always… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I love love. I love having a lover and being one. The insularity of passion. I love it. I love the way… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share Image
I don't look at my work in a critical or analytical way; I just don't think of myself objectively. It doesn't interest… — 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
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
Childhood is Last Chance Gulch for happiness. After that, you know too much. — Tom Stoppard Copy Share
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
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
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
“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
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
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
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
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
We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out… — Tom Stoppard Copy Share
