Quote

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

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
Find
Plays
Play
Sentences
Hard
Speaking
Chekhov
Mean
However
Translated
People
Words
Shocked
Two
Russian
Cannot
Sentence
May
Shock

More quotes by Tom Stoppard

Image
I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.
Tom Stoppard
Image
You can't but know that if you can capture the emotions of the audience as well as their minds, the play will work better, because it's a narrative art form.
Tom Stoppard
Image
The causes we know everything about depend on causes we know very little about, which depend on causes we know absolutely nothing about.
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
Image
I will take his secret to the grave, telling people I meet on the way.
Tom Stoppard
Image
It's not the voting that's democracy it's the counting.
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
I don't write at the library, because I smoke when I work or would like the possibility of a smoke. Also, I need to be at my own desk.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Every age thinks it's the modern age, but this one really is. Electricity is going to change everything. Everything!
Tom Stoppard
Image
He says his aim is poetry. One does not aim at poetry with pistols. At poets, perhaps.
Tom Stoppard
Image
I don't keep a diary and I throw away nearly all the paper I might have kept. I don't keep an archive. There's something worrying about my make-up that I try to leave no trace of myself apart from my plays.
Tom Stoppard
Image
One bulls-eye and you're rich and famous. The rich get more famous and the famous get rich. You're the talk of the town....The sense of so much depending on success is very hard to ignore, perhaps impossible. It leads to disproportionate anxiety and disproportionate relief or disappointment.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Save the gerund and screw the whale.
Tom Stoppard
Image
To say that it is without pace, point, focus, interest, drama, wit or originality is to say simply that it does not happen to be my cup of tea.
Tom Stoppard
Image
Suicide is no more than a trick played on the calendar.
Tom Stoppard
Image
We must be born with an intuition of mortality.
Tom Stoppard
Image
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.
Tom Stoppard
Image
I don't act, I don't direct, I don't design.
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