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
A scholar's business is to add to what is known. That is all. But it is capable of giving the very greatest satisfaction, because knowledge is good. It does not have to look good or even sound good or even do good. It is good just by being knowledge. And the only thing that makes it knowledge is that it is true. You can't have too much of it and there is no little too little to be worth having. There is truth and falsehood in a comma.
Pirates could happen to anyone.
I cannot say that I write with any social objective. One writes because one loves writing, really.
I write scenes - often quite long scenes - mainly because I still get seduced into writing six lines where one and a half will do.
Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... 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.
A man speaking sense to himself is no madder than a man speaking nonsense not to himself.
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.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.
I like plays where people talk a lot. Conversation is sustained. Argument is sustained.
The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
Never believe in mirrors or newspapers.
I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.