"Stoppard talking about his life on Front Row, BBC Radio 4"

Tom Stoppard Literature See all quotes by Tom Stoppard →

React to this quote

More by Tom Stoppard

“What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.”

“Words, words. They’re all we have to go on.”

“(an anguished cry): Consistency is all I ask! (low, wry rhetoric): Give us this day our daily mask.”

“All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.”

“We’re more of the blood, love and rhetoric school. Well, I’ll leave the choice to you, if there is anything to choose between them. They’re hardly divisible, sir—well, I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can’t do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory—they’re all blood, you see.”

“Maidens aspiring to godheads— And vice versa—”

Resonant Thoughts

"The theory of an existing and benevolent god simply doesn't make sense to anyone who is rational. A benevolent and omnipotent god would never allow such imbalances as I see to exist for one second. If…"

— George Jackson (activist)

Social Activism1941–1971

#life

"I tried to capture the recollection of that experience. As if to say, you have these war-like, traumatic experiences and you retell them and retell them and each time you add something that wasn’t the…"

— Willie Perdomo

Literature1967

#life

"We have to count. I want to be part of history. I want a Wikipedia page. I want Google hits. I don’t want to be just a living organism that comes and goes and leaves no trace on this planet."

— Douglas Coupland

Literature1961

#life