It takes character to withstand the rigours of indolence. Tom Stoppard More Quotes by Tom Stoppard More Quotes From Tom Stoppard There's something scary about stupidity made coherent. Tom Stoppard stupidity scary stupid There we were - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance - and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. Don't you see?! We're actors - we're the opposite of people! Tom Stoppard clouds men children The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is. Tom Stoppard arcadia together way Art cannot be subordinate to its subject, otherwise it is not art but biography. Tom Stoppard subjects biographies art I am not my body. My body is nothing without me. Tom Stoppard health-care body beauty I think theater ought to be theatrical ... you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it's -- there's always some kind of ambush involved in the experience. You're being ambushed by an unexpected word, or by an elephant falling out of the cupboard, whatever it is. Tom Stoppard elephants fall thinking Your opinions are your symptoms. Tom Stoppard symptoms opinion Give us this day our daily mask. Tom Stoppard bread-of-life prayer bible We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else. Tom Stoppard somewhere-else integrity history I write fiction because it's a way of making statements I can disown. Tom Stoppard writing way fiction Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking: Well, at least I'm not dead. Tom Stoppard life lying thinking Words, words. They're all we have to go on. Tom Stoppard goes-on 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 irony talent gone I've lost all capacity for disbelief. I'm not sure that I could even rise to a little gentle scepticism. Tom Stoppard capacity lost littles We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see. Tom Stoppard giving blood school 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. Tom Stoppard half doe tuesday I don't think I can be expected to take seriously any game which takes less than three days to reach its conclusion. Tom Stoppard games sports thinking Autumnal -- nothing to do with leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at the edges of the day ... Brown is creeping up on us, take my word for it ... Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flushing the very outside edge of the senses... deep shining ochres, burnt umber and parchments of baked earth -- reflecting on itself and through itself, filtering the light. At such times, perhaps, coincidentally, the leaves might fall, somewhere, by repute. Yesterday was blue, like smoke. Tom Stoppard light blue fall Sometimes people are so close to the material, they miss an important cross-reference. You can't drop this line because half an hour later, it affects that line. And the writer is the person who knows that immediately. Tom Stoppard important missing people How the hell do I know what I find incredible? Credibility is an expanding field... Sheer disbelief hardly registers on the face before the head is nodding with all the wisdom of instant hindsight. Tom Stoppard nodding fields faces
