Writing Quotes by Tom Stoppard

Fantasy flows in where fact leaves a vacuum.

— Tom Stoppard

I enjoy writing dialogue; it comes naturally to me.

— Tom Stoppard

A writer doesn't really have much of a function on a movie set.

— Tom Stoppard

I write out of my intellectual experience.

— Tom Stoppard

I think I'm a difficult conventional writer.

— Tom Stoppard

I'm very unhappy about my entire life if my writing is going wrong.

— Tom Stoppard

can only write about what bites you.

— Tom Stoppard

I write fiction because it's a way of making statements I can disown.

— Tom Stoppard

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a…

— Tom Stoppard

In the end, one has to feel lucky that things fell out O.K. I've felt that all the years I've been writing…

— Tom Stoppard

He's never known anything like it! But then, he has never known anything to write home about, so this is nothing to…

— Tom Stoppard

I began writing for theater, and maybe because of that I've always thought of myself as a theater writer who does work…

— Tom Stoppard

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

I don't write at the library, because I smoke when I work or would like the possibility of a smoke. Also, I…

— Tom Stoppard

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

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

I never had any frustration about writing uncredited. I always felt that the satisfaction of doing it was in the doing of…

— Tom Stoppard

The whole excitement for writing anything is quite intense. And for a day or two, you think you've done everything extremely well.…

— Tom Stoppard

All of my scripts are based on other people's novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who writes for theatre. I do…

— Tom Stoppard

I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put a position, rebut it, refute the…

— Tom Stoppard

When you write, it's making a certain kind of music in your head. There's a rhythm to it, a pulse, and on…

— Tom Stoppard

Writing a play is like smashing that [glass] ashtray, filming it in slow motion, and then running the film in reverse, so…

— Tom Stoppard

I'm not like some other writers: I have no actual urgent need or desire to add to what's written. You write it;…

— Tom Stoppard

Sometimes directors feel a script needs something, but they're not sure what it is, so they show it to a friend; if…

— Tom Stoppard

Poetical feelings are a peril to scholarship. There are always poetical people ready to protest that a corrupt line is exquisite. Exquisite…

— Tom Stoppard

Quite early on, and certainly since I started writing, I found that philosophical questions occupied me more than any other kind. I…

— 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

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

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied…

— Tom Stoppard

Most British playwrights of my generation, as well as younger folks, apparently feel somewhat obliged to Russian literature - and not only…

— Tom Stoppard

I feel that when I began writing, I had a need to know more about the play before I got into it.…

— Tom Stoppard

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

“HENRY: Leave me out of it. They don’t count. Maybe Brodie got a raw deal, maybe he didn’t. I don’t know. It…

— Tom Stoppard

Save the gerund and screw the whale.

— Tom Stoppard

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

— Tom Stoppard

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

— 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

Embarrassingly enough, I often can't remember how I came to write something.

— 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

I cannot say that I write with any social objective. One writes because one loves writing, really.

— Tom Stoppard