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Traitors hoist by their own petard?--or victims of the gods?--we shall never know!

Tom Stoppard

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Tom Stoppard
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: July 3
Dramaturge
Film Director
Journalist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Zlin
Sir Tom Stoppard
Hoist
Traitors
Traitor
Victims
Gods
Victim
Shall
Never

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A circle is the longest distance to same point.
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I like plays where people talk a lot. Conversation is sustained. Argument is sustained.
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Your opinions are your symptoms.
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The results of the divorce between truth and human beings can be most graphically observed in politics.
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The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
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War is capitalism with the gloves off and many who go to war know it but they go to war because they don't want to be a hero.
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You're familiar with the tragedies of antiquity, are you? The great homicidal classics?
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I'm the kind of person who embarks on an endless leapfrog down the great moral issues. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal and rebut the refutation. Endlessly.
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Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
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Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last.
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I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.
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Rewriting isn't just about dialogue, it's the order of the scenes, how you finish a scene, how you get into a scene. All these final decisions are best made when you're there, watching. It's really enjoyable, but you've got to be there at the director's invitation. You can't just barge in and say, I'm the writer.
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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.
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Chater: 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.
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You always end up with too much, so it's good to be part of the conversation about not just what you can omit, but how you are going to do the grammar of the omission, how you make things continue to work when there's something missing. It's your last chance to rewrite.
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Rosencrantz: 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.
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Act first! The ideas will follow, and if not - well, it's progress
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If rationality were the criterion for things being allowed to exist, the world would be one gigantic field of soya beans!
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Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light.
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