Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child
Tom StoppardI never had any frustration about writing uncredited. I always felt that the satisfaction of doing it was in the doing of it, really, and getting recognised by the small number of people that know what you did.
Tom StoppardWhen I think of how things could have turned out, I feel as if I've dodged, not just bullets, but 6mm shells.
Tom StoppardFifty-five crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can't think of anything more trivial than quarks, quasars, big bangs and black holes.
Tom StoppardRosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat? Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat. Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats. Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.
Tom StoppardIn January 1962, when I was the author of one and a half unperformed plays, I attended a student production of 'The Birthday Party' at the Victoria Rooms in Bristol. Just before it began, I realised that Harold Pinter was sitting in front of me.
Tom StoppardReal data is messy. ...It's all very noisy out there. Very hard to spot the tune. Like a piano in the next room, it's playing your song, but unfortunately it's out of whack, some of the strings are missing, and the pianist is tone deaf and drunk- I mean, the noise! Impossible!
Tom StoppardIn 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.
Tom StoppardI can put two and two together, you know. Do not think you are dealing with a man who has lost his grapes.
Tom StoppardChater: You dare to call me that. I demand satisfaction! Septimus: Mrs Chater demanded satisfaction and now you are demanding satisfaction. I cannot spend my time day and night satisfying the demands of the Chater family.
Tom StoppardWe must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction. And time is its only measure.
Tom StoppardBetween "just desserts" and "tragic irony" we are given quite a lot of scope for our particular talent. Generally speaking, things have gone about as far as they can possibly go when things have got about as bad as they reasonably get.
Tom StoppardYou can persuade a man to believe almost anything provided he is clever enough, but it is much more difficult to persuade someone less clever.
Tom StoppardI would join Sisyphus in Hades and gladly push my boulder up the slope if only, each time it rolled back down, I were given a line of Aeschylus.
Tom StoppardWe're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.
Tom StoppardIf rationality were the criterion for things being allowed to exist, the world would be one gigantic field of soya beans!
Tom StoppardI doubt that art needed Ruskin any more than a moving train needs one of its passengers to shove it.
Tom StoppardWe've traveled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.
Tom StoppardI've lost all capacity for disbelief. I'm not sure that I could even rise to a little gentle scepticism.
Tom StoppardIf enough things that are untrue are said about you, no one will know what really is true.
Tom Stoppard