649 Quotes by Tom Stoppard

I have a spasm of envy for the person that was killed by a falling bookcase, as long as it doesn't happen prematurely.

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

Time is short, life is short, there's a lot to know. So I skip the entertainers in the newspaper now. I just haven't got time.

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...

To say that it is without pace, point, focus, interest, drama, wit or originality is to say simply that it does not happen to be my cup of tea.

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.

The whole philosophy of modern times is to dissolve distinctions between individuals and deal with them as large collections of people. It's essentially self-interested on the part of authority.

Fantasy flows in where fact leaves a vacuum.

To be frank: the translations that often sound bad in the mouths of the actors, these have often been done by linguists.