Quote

Since we cannot hope for order, let us withdraw with style from the chaos.

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
Order
Cannot
Withdraw
Chaos
Expectations
Style
Since
Hope

More quotes by Tom Stoppard

Image
When I think of how things could have turned out, I feel as if I've dodged, not just bullets, but 6mm shells.
Tom Stoppard
Image
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.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Each move is dictated by the previous one--that is the meaning of order
Tom Stoppard
Image
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.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Childhood is Last Chance Gulch for happiness. After that, you know too much.
Tom Stoppard
Image
We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. but there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Give us this day our daily mask.
Tom Stoppard
Image
It was a different planet in 1967, the Broadway theatre. It had a little ashtray clamped to the back of every seat and the author got 10% of the gross.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder. In the end I gave in. That reminds me—I spotted something between her legs that made me think of you.
Tom Stoppard
Image
The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.
Tom Stoppard
Image
A circle is the longest distance to same point.
Tom Stoppard
Image
I've lost all capacity for disbelief. I'm not sure that I could even rise to a little gentle scepticism.
Tom Stoppard
Image
I shall have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love, love, love, above all. Love as there has never been in a play. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture.
Tom Stoppard
Image
A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.
Tom Stoppard
Image
It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Sometimes directors feel a script needs something, but they're not sure what it is, so they show it to a friend if the friend is a writer, he ends up kicking around with that script for a while.
Tom Stoppard
Image
It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.
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
Image
I don't really have a system or set of principles. It's kind of common sense mixed up with instinct.
Tom Stoppard
Image
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.
Tom Stoppard