Quotes By 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 essentially self-interested on the part of authority.

Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society.

The days of the digital watch are numbered.

I write out of my intellectual experience.

I can't remember what my first script was.

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want.

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.

I write scenes - often quite long scenes - mainly because I still get seduced into writing six lines where one and a half will do.

As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that.

My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.

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

The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.

A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.

I'm attracted to the past.

The fact is, I loved being English. I was very happy to be turned into an English schoolboy.

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

The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.

If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.

Life in a box is better than no life at all... I expect.

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.