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 smoke too much whether it's going well or badly. After all these years, I definitely associate having a pen in my hand with having an ashtray just out of eye line.
It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
To be frank: the translations that often sound bad in the mouths of the actors, these have often been done by linguists.
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.
Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?
It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.
I don't really have a system or set of principles. It's kind of common sense mixed up with instinct.
Theater is still a medium which attracts young writers. You'd think that it would be all over by now, with television and film. But it's not.
Pirates could happen to anyone.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
What did you have in mind? A short, blunt human pyramid?
What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.
The days of the digitals are numbered. The metaphor is built into them like a self-destruct mechanism.
If enough things that are untrue are said about you, no one will know what really is true.