Quote

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

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
Good
Last
Omission
Always
Ends
Rewrite
Things
Part
Grammar
Going
Continue
Work
Conversation
Much
Missing
Something
Chance
Make
Lasts
Omit

More quotes by Tom Stoppard

Image
My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.
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
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.
Tom Stoppard
Image
For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next time I write a play I will be revealed as someone who is no good at all.
Tom Stoppard
Image
I write for film or, in this case, television when I haven't got a play cooking.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Good things, when short, are twice as good.
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
Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society.
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
The names for things don't come first. Words stagger after, hopelessly trying to become the sensation.
Tom Stoppard
Image
I really love being in postproduction. First of all, it's all quite self-interested: You can protect things.
Tom Stoppard
Image
I've got no interest in educating or instructing people.
Tom Stoppard
Image
It's not the voting that's democracy it's the counting.
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
You can't treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires.
Tom Stoppard
Image
One of the nice things about the world of filmmaking is that you make friends in the business.
Tom Stoppard
Image
I like plays where people talk a lot. Conversation is sustained. Argument is sustained.
Tom Stoppard
Image
A circle is the longest distance to same point.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Normally, even if you're on the set for 12 hours, there may be only a moment or two when you are actually useful.
Tom Stoppard
Image
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.
Tom Stoppard