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
I have a spasm of envy for the person that was killed by a falling bookcase, as long as it doesn't happen prematurely.
I have about a dozen cassettes lying about which I use in random order. Very often, I pick up a cassette to dictate a letter, and I find my voice coming back at me with the lines of plays three years old.
If I see an actor in a role that is really terrifying, no matter how many times I meet him socially, I'm still frightened of him. I think he's going to hit me.
I would count myself as a friend of Vaclav Havel.
I don't even know what my voice is to this day.
I don't feel that I belong anywhere. Or rather, if there's a place I belong, I don't feel I'm there.
I don't find it easy to think of good stuff to write about.
I don't draw on my inner life in my work.
I don't know that I want to share all my most intimate secrets.
I don't believe that we evolved moral psychology; it just doesn't seem plausible to me as a biological phenomenon.
I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to the death your right to say it.
I adopted England as least as much as England adopted me.
I actually went to an Oasis concert. I thought they were a brilliant songwriting band.
I am aware, as everybody has to be, that there's more competition for one's attention nowadays.