Quote

I write scenes - often quite long scenes - mainly because I still get seduced into writing six lines where one and a half will do.

Tom Stoppard

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Tom Stoppard
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: July 3
Dramaturge
Film Director
Journalist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Zlin
Sir Tom Stoppard
Write
Mainly
Stills
Scenes
Still
Six
Writing
Scene
Long
Quite
Lines
Half
Often
Seduced

More quotes by Tom Stoppard

Image
No matter how imperfect things are, if you've got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Your opinions are your symptoms.
Tom Stoppard
Image
It seems pointless to be quoted if one isn't going to be quotable ... it's better to be quotable than honest.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Obviously, you would give your life for your children, or give them the last biscuit on the plate. But to me, the trick in life is to take that sense of generosity between kin, make it apply to the extended family and to your neighbour, your village and beyond.
Tom Stoppard
Image
It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
Tom Stoppard
Image
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.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Since we cannot hope for order, let us withdraw with style from the chaos.
Tom Stoppard
Image
My mind gets into a verbal mode.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Player: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life question your sitution at every turn.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Save the gerund and screw the whale.
Tom Stoppard
Image
In 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 Stoppard
Image
Imagination without skill gives us contemporary art.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Having translated two plays by Chekhov, and not speaking Russian myself - I cannot say one sentence. This may shock people... However, I am not shocked, as it is not hard to find out what the words mean.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Between 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 Stoppard
Image
The results of the divorce between truth and human beings can be most graphically observed in politics.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Wars are fought for oil wells and coaling stations for control of the Dardanelles or the Suez Canal for colonial pickings to buy cheap in and conquered markets to sell dear in. War is capitalism with the gloves off.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Words are sacred. If you get the right ones in the right order you can nudge the world a little.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Personally I am in favour of education but a university is not the place for it.
Tom Stoppard
Image
It's where we're nearest to our humanness. Useless knowledge for its own sake. Useful knowledge is good, too, but it's for the faint-hearted, an elaboration of the real thing, which is only to shine some light, it doesn't matter where on what, it's the light itself, against the darkness, it's what's left of God's purpose when you take away God.
Tom Stoppard