Tom Stoppard

“It is no light matter to put in jeopardy a single life when it is the very singularity of each life which underpins the idea of a just society.”

“If I had been asked to write 1,200 words for a newspaper tomorrow, on any subject, I would just do it rather than leave a white hole in the page. And I think it's a very healthy attitude to...”

“Any revival in which I am involved is liable to change.”

“I loved the Beatles when they turned up, and the Stones when they turned up, and never really stopped liking them.”

“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.”

“Lou Reed was a hero because he was an anti-hero.”

“To wrap up the idea of 'Parade's End' in a sentence or two, I would say it's a love story in which we see a man with two women, and we know what's attractive about them. And we know why and...”

“It's really hard to talk about writing, and I'm usually conscious if I'm misleading people or misleading the questioner, because the problem with writing is the next line.”

“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.”

“A writer doesn't really have much of a function on a movie set.”

“I don't respond well to the Olympic noise, which is the noise of nationalistic triumphalism.”

“I get the impression sometimes that a play arrives in a sequence of events that I have no control over.”

“Life in a box is better than no life at all... I expect.”

“The possibilities are infinite with new writing; every time you open a new script, there's no limit to what it might contain.”

“The days of the digital watch are numbered.”

“I actually went to an Oasis concert. I thought they were a brilliant songwriting band.”

“Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which i...”

“I'm offended by things and take pathetic little stands against them.”

“You end up going to school plays quite a bit as a parent, there are a lot of kids who are doing the job as well as they can, but there's always one or two who seem much more at home in the w...”

“Theatre probably originated without texts, but by the time we get to the classical Greek period, theatre has become text-based.”