Quotes by Tom Stoppard

About Tom Stoppard:

Sir Tom Stoppard is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He co-wrote the screenplays for Brazil, The Russia House, and Shakespeare in Love, and has received one Academy Award and four Tony Awards. Themes of human rights, censorship and political freedom pervade his work along with exploration of linguistics and philosophy. Stoppard has been a key playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.

Tom Stoppard

The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.

Tom Stoppard

Back in the East you can't do much without the right papers, but with the right papers you can do anything The believe in papers. Papers are power.

Tom Stoppard

When Auden said his poetry didn't save one Jew from the gas chamber, he'd said it all.

Tom Stoppard

I think I give the impression of being a romantic, and I think inside I'm quite severe. But some might say they had the opposite impression of me.

Tom Stoppard

Like almost everything else from the West, the Romantic Revolution arrived late in Russia.

Tom Stoppard

Although I don't examine myself in this respect, I would say, off the top of my head, that I've come to acknowledge my Czechness more as I get older.

Tom Stoppard

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

Tom Stoppard

Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society.

Tom Stoppard

What is the society we wish to protect? Is it the society of complete surveillance for the commonwealth? Is this the wealth we seek to have in common - optimal security at the cost of maximal surveillance?

Tom Stoppard

That I have the right to express myself freely at all times in all circumstances entails the idea that free speech is a 'basic human right' possessed by each individual, and, as such, trumps the interests of the society or group, including my neighbo...

Tom Stoppard

To wrap up the idea of 'Parade's End' in a sentence or two, I would say it's a love story in which we see a man with two women, and we know what's attractive about them. And we know why and what they feel about him.

Tom Stoppard

'Shakespeare in Love' was a particularly happy film.

Tom Stoppard

I don't think falling in love in Slovakia is much different from falling in love in Tunbridge Wells.

Tom Stoppard

In 2005, I got an email from Belarus Free Theatre. They were emailing playwrights in America and England announcing their existence and saying they would like support from us. I wrote back and asked if they wanted us to visit. They said, 'Yes, we'd l...

Tom Stoppard

Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward t...

Tom Stoppard

People have quite a simple idea about 'Anna Karenina.' They feel that the novel is entirely about a young married woman who falls in love with a cavalry officer and leaves her husband after much agony, and pays the price for that.

Tom Stoppard

To be in love with Debo Devonshire is hardly a distinction.

Tom Stoppard

Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.

Tom Stoppard

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

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 the whole, I'm writing to that drum rather than the psychological process.

Tom Stoppard

Author Bio

  • NameTom Stoppard
  • DescriptionBritish playwright
  • BornJuly 3, 1937
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionPlaywright; Screenwriter; Journalist; Writer
  • AwardsLaurence Olivier Award; Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire; PEN Pinter Prize; Laurel Award For Screenwriting Achievement; Academy Award For Best Writing (Original Screenplay); Writers Guild Of America Award; Praemium Imperiale