649 Quotes by Tom Stoppard

There we were – demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance – and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. Don’t you see?! We’re actors – we’re the opposite of people!

The Plastic People of the Universe played ‘Venus in Furs’ from Velvet Underground, and I knew everything was basically okay.

Fatherlessness didn’t strike me as being an event. It was a state of life.

An artist is the magician put among men to gratify – capriciously – their urge for immortality.

As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don’t know what death is, it is illogical to fear it.

I’ve lost all capacity for disbelief. I’m not sure that I could even rise to a little gentle scepticism.

People do terrible things to each other, but it’s worse in the places where everybody is kept in the dark.

We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there’s only one direction. And time is its only measure.

Act first! The ideas will follow, and if not – well, it’s progress.