Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM CBE FRSLis a British playwright and screenwriter, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He co-wrote the screenplays for Brazil, The Russia House, and Shakespeare in Love, and has received one Academy Award and four Tony Awards. Themes of human rights, censorship and...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth3 July 1937
CityZlin, Czech Republic
You are an over-excited little man, with a need for self-expression far beyond the scope of your natural gifts. This is not discreditable. Neither does it make you an artist.
We must be born with an intuition of mortality.
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.
Theater is a recreation. It can be much more, but unless it's recreation, I don't see the point of it.
Good things, when short, are twice as good.
I consider myself to be a very fortunate person and to have led a very fortunate life.
We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.
Biography is the mesh through which real life escapes.
An artist is the magician put among men to gratify - capriciously - their urge for immortality.
Junk journalism is the evidence of a society that has got at least one thing right, that there should be nobody with the power to dictate where responsible journalism begins.
can only write about what bites you.
Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society.
Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want.
Fatherlessness didn't strike me as being an event. It was a state of life.