Tom Stoppard

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Thomas Stoppard (born 3 July 1937) British dramatist and screenwriter; born Tomáš Straussler in Czechoslovakia.

See also: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Shakespeare in Love

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Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966)

  • The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe — responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.
    • This is a reference to a quote of Rudyard Kipling, "Power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages," which became widely known after being quoted by prime minister Stanley Baldwin in a speech of March 17, 1931.
  • A truth that must be the compound of two opposite half-truths. And you never reach it because there is always something more to say.
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Artist Descending a Staircase (1972)

  • Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
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Jumpers (1972)

  • It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.
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Travesties (1974)

  • An essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.
  • An artist is the magician put among men to gratify — capriciously — their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships — and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes — husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer.
    • Spoken by the character James Joyce. Stoppard called this "the most important" speech in the play.
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Night and Day (1978)

  • The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
  • I'm with you on the free press. It's the newspapers I can't stand.
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The Real Thing (1982)

  • The days of the digitals are numbered. The metaphor is built into them like a self-destruct mechanism.
    • Act I, scene I. Often quoted as "The days of the digital watch are numbered."
  • If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.
    • Act II, scene V
  • 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.
    • Act II, scene V
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Arcadia (1993)

  • It is a defect of God's humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.
  • It's the wanting to know that makes us matter.
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The Invention of Love (1997)

  • Miss Frobisher smiles, with little cause that I know of. If Jesus of Nazareth had had before him the example of Miss Frobisher getting through the Latin degree papers of the London University Examinations Board he wouldn’t have had to fall back on camels and the eyes of needles, and Miss Frobisher’s name would be a delightful surprise to encounter in Matthew, Chapter 19; as would, even more surprisingly, the London University Examinations Board. Your name is not Miss Frobisher? What is your name? Miss Burton. I’m very sorry. I stand corrected. If Jesus of Nazareth had had before him the example of Miss Burton getting through the... Oh, dear, I hope it is not I who have made you cry.
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Interviews and profiles

  • I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.
    • "Tom Stoppard," profile by Kenneth Tynan, The New Yorker (19 December 1977)
  • I began my talk by saying that I had not written my plays for purposes of discussion. At once, I felt a ripple of panic run through the hall. I suddenly realised why. To everyone present, discussion was the whole point of drama. That was why the faculty had been endowed- that was why all those buildings had been put up! I had undermined the entire reason for their existence.
    • "Tom Stoppard," profile by Kenneth Tynan, The New Yorker (19 December 1977)
  • I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.
    • Interview, The Guardian (London, 18 March 1988)
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Attributed

  • A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
  • From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.
  • I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to the death your right to say it.
    • This is an ironic inversion of the famous statement usually attributed to Voltaire: "I disagree with what you say, but would defend to the death your right to say it."
  • I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
  • If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice.
  • 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.
  • It's better to be quotable than to be honest.
  • My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.
  • Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.
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Misattributed

  • It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing.
    • Actual source: Seneca , Epistle 88, as seen in the following: "You may sweep all these theories in with the superfluous troops of 'liberal' studies; the one class of men give me a knowledge that will be of no use to me, the other class do away with any hope of attaining knowledge. It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing. One set of philosophers offers no light by which I may direct my gaze toward the truth; the other digs out my very eyes and leaves me blind." Seneca: Epistle 88
  • My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.
  • Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it.
  • If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.
    • Said by Abraham Sutzkever (born 1913), poet writing in Yiddish (see interview in The New York Times, March 17, 1985)
  • If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.
  • Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.
  • A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar— you pretend it's not there.
    • Said by Darryl Hannah [1]
  • We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.
    • Said by William R(ounseville) Alger, American clergyman and writer [1822-1905]
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External links


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