“I write out of my intellectual experience.”
Experience
“I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.”
FreedomAll Quotes by Tom Stoppard
“Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society.”
Society“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.”
Art“From as long as, literally as far back as I can remember I've liked puns, word jokes, I can literally recall looking at a comic at the age of six or seven and I remember what I enjoyed and what it was precisely and how the joke worked.”
Age“I was delighted to not go to university. I couldn't wait to be out of education.”
Education“I think that the present is worth attention, one shouldn't sacrifice it to future conceptions of, of this future or that future.”
Future“It's not the voting that's democracy it's the counting.”
Government“Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.”
Age“Any revival in which I am involved is liable to change.”
Change“I don't act, I don't direct, I don't design.”
Design“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.”
Art“I like pop music. I consider rock 'n' roll to be a branch of pop music.”
Music“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.”
Beauty“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.”
Work“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.”
Power“I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.”
Age“A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.”
Attitude“I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.”
Change“From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.”
Truth“I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.”
Freedom