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
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.
The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.
Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.
I have two garden parties a year to avoid going out to dinner.
It's so great in the theater when everyone catches up on the truth.
the bewilderment and incomprehension of critics and audience.
Theatre probably originated without texts, but by the time we get to the classical Greek period, theatre has become text-based.
I want to support the whole idea of the humanities and teaching the humanities as being something that - even if it can't be quantitatively measured as other subjects - it's as fundamental to all education.
I'm not interested in clothes; I just like them.
I flinch when I see my name in the newspapers.
I'm very unhappy about my entire life if my writing is going wrong.
I'm very garrulous, but I don't say anything.
I'm not that taken with Freudian perspectives. They seem to be overcomplicated.
I like the notion of theater as recreational.