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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

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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
Good
Left
Shine
Away
Useless
Doesn
Useful
Light
Shining
Elaboration
Matter
Sake
Humanness
Take
Darkness
Nearest
Real
Knowledge
Faint
Thing
Purpose
Hearted

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When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?
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A writer doesn't really have much of a function on a movie set.
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Hell is very likely to be modernization infinitely extended.
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Normally, even if you're on the set for 12 hours, there may be only a moment or two when you are actually useful.
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Back in the East you can't do much without the right papers, but with the right papers you can do anything The believe in papers. Papers are power.
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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.
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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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Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God.
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The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
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Your opinions are your symptoms.
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I really love being in postproduction. First of all, it's all quite self-interested: You can protect things.
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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.
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One of the nice things about the world of filmmaking is that you make friends in the business.
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It's no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst.
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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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If you want to change something by Tuesday, theater is no good. Journalism is what does that. But, if you want to just alter the chemistry of the moral matrix, then theater has a longer half-life.
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I don't act, I don't direct, I don't design.
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Uncertainty is the normal state.
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