I think theater ought to be theatrical ... you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it's -- there's always some kind of ambush involved in the experience. You're being ambushed by an unexpected word, or by an elephant falling out of the cupboard, whatever it is.
TOM STOPPARD, interview, March 10, 1999
Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
TOM STOPPARD, "Artist Descending a Staircase"
A genuine love of learning is one of the two delinquencies which cause blindness and lead a young man to ruin.
TOM STOPPARD, The Invention of Love
We're actors -- we're the opposite of people.
TOM STOPPARD, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Hell is very likely to be modernization infinitely extended.
TOM STOPPARD, The Invention of Love
We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.
TOM STOPPARD, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Art cannot be subordinate to its subject, otherwise it is not art but biography.
TOM STOPPARD, The Invention of Love
Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
TOM STOPPARD, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
There is truth and falsehood in a comma.
TOM STOPPARD, The Invention of Love
It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.
TOM STOPPARD, London Guardian, Mar. 18, 1988
Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are ... condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one -- that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost.
TOM STOPPARD, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?
TOM STOPPARD, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
If you were handed power on a plate you'd be left fighting over a plate.
TOM STOPPARD, Squaring the Circle
Personally I am in favour of education but a university is not the place for it.
TOM STOPPARD, The Invention of Love
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