Quotes By Tom Stoppard

It was a different planet in 1967, the Broadway theatre. It had a little ashtray clamped to the back of every seat and the author got 10% of the gross.

In the theater there is often a tension, almost a contradiction, between the way real people would think and behave, and a kind of imposed dramaticness.

I'm offended by things and take pathetic little stands against them.

My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.

I like pop music. I consider rock 'n' roll to be a branch of pop music.

I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.

Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.

I've got no interest in educating or instructing people.

I'm vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes.

From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.

I never had any frustration about writing uncredited. I always felt that the satisfaction of doing it was in the doing of it, really, and getting recognised by the small number of people that know what you did.

I'm hopeless at looking into myself and trying to see how things are working and why.

If the audience is made to do not enough work, they resent it without knowing it. Too much and they get lost. There's a perfect pace to be found. And a perfect place that is different for every line of the play.

I take every possible side.

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.

I read for interest and enjoyment, and when I cease to enjoy it I stop.

My life feels, week to week, incomplete to the level of being pointless if I am not in preparation for the next play or, ideally, into it.

I don't think Stoppardian has a precise definition.

I consider myself to be a very fortunate person and to have led a very fortunate life.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

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

It's better to be quotable than to be honest.

If enough things that are untrue are said about you, no one will know what really is true.