Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM CBE FRSLis a British playwright and screenwriter, 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...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth3 July 1937
CityZlin, Czech Republic
James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.
Life in a box is better than no life at all... I expect.
Any revival in which I am involved is liable to change.
A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.
When I think of how things could have turned out, I feel as if I've dodged, not just bullets, but 6mm shells.
The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
The fact is that people are attracted to new work and by new work.
Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.
The fact is, I loved being English. I was very happy to be turned into an English schoolboy.
I'm a conservative kind of person. I don't think rightwing is quite the same thing. But I acknowledge my conservatism of temperament.
I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation.
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.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next time I write a play I will be revealed as someone who is no good at all.