Tom Stoppard quotes - page 9

Player: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life question your sitution at every turn. (Tom Stoppard)
I think that the present is worth attention, one shouldn't sacrifice it to future conceptions of, of this future or that future. View quote
Tom Stoppard
I don't act, I don't direct, I don't design. View quote
Tom Stoppard
I've seldom minded other people's opinions, but the other side of that coin is that I've seldom been interested by them, um their opinions about me I mean. View quote
Tom Stoppard
Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one's memory. And yet, I can't remember it. View quote
Tom Stoppard
Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over... Death is not anything... death is not... It's the absence of presence, nothing more... the endless time of never coming back... a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes not sound... View quote
Tom Stoppard
The results of the divorce between truth and human beings can be most graphically observed in politics. View quote
Tom Stoppard
Now a philosopher exploring the difficult terrain of right and wrong should not be over-impressed by the argument "a child would know the difference". But when, let us say, we are being persuaded that it is ethical to put someone in prison for reading or writing the wrong books, it is well to be reminded that you can persuade a man to believe almost anything provided he is clever enough, but it is much more difficult to persuade someone less clever. View quote
Tom Stoppard
Wagner: There were printers getting more than journalists! Milne: Yes, I know, but you make it sound as if the natural order has been overthrown. Fish sing in the streets, rivers run uphill, and the printers are getting more than the journalists. Okay - you're worth more than a printer. But look at some of this - "We find the vanishing vicar of Lovers' Leap!" "Sally Smith is a tea lady in a Blackpool engineering works, but it was the way she filled those C-cups which got our cameraman all stirred up!" It's crap. And it's written by grown men earning maybe ten thousand a year. If I was a printer, I'd look at some of the stuff I'm given to print, and I'd ask myself what is supposed to be so special about the people who write it - is that radical enough for you - Dick? View quote
Tom Stoppard