Tom Stoppard Quotes & Sayings (Page 7)

“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.”

“Time is short, life is short, there's a lot to know. So I skip the entertainers in the newspaper now. I just haven't got time.”

“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.”

“I've seldom minded other people's opinions, but the other side of that coin is that I've seldom been interested by them, um their opinions about me I mean.”

“If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.”

“Theater in New York is nearer to the street. In London, you have to go deep into the building, usually, to reach the place where theater happens. On Broadway, only the fire doors separate you from the sidewalk, and you're lucky if the sound of a police car doesn't rip the envelope twice a night.”

“The idea of the state is, or should be, a very limited, prescribed idea. The state looks after the defense of the realm, and other matters - raising revenue to pay for things which are for all of us, and so on. That idea has turned turtle now. The state isn't any longer perceived as an institution which exists to serve us.”

“I think... the history of civilization is an attempt to codify, classify and categorize aspects of human nature that hardly lend themselves to that process.”

“From as long as, literally as far back as I can remember I've liked puns, word jokes, I can literally recall looking at a comic at the age of six or seven and I remember what I enjoyed and what it was precisely and how the joke worked.”

“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.”