When people discuss his plays, he says that he feels like he's standing at customs watching an official ransack his luggage. He cheerfully declares responsibility for a play about two people, and suddenly the officer is finding all manner of exotic contraband like the nature of God and identity, and while he can't deny that they're there, he can't for the life of him remember putting them there. In the end, a play is not the product of an idea; an idea is the product of a play.

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.

Save the gerund and screw the whale.

I don't think Stoppardian has a precise definition.

Childhood is Last Chance Gulch for happiness. After that, you know too much.

Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking: Well, at least I'm not dead.

All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.