Tom Stoppard

You can't but know that if you can capture the emotions of the audience as well as their minds, the play will work better, because it's a narrative art form.

I can be affectionate about a lot of things without watching them.

There are certain sorts of jokes which have only to do with the substitution of the unexpected word in a familiar context. If you translated something into French and then had it translated back into English by somebody who didn't know the original, you'd lose what was funny.

It was a different planet in 1967, the Broadway theatre. It had a little ashtray clamped to the back of every seat and the author got 10% of the gross.

I don't feel like a Londoner.

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

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.

Despite the digital age, there is a very large number of venues and spaces that are looking for plays, and many of them are looking for new plays.

That I have the right to express myself freely at all times in all circumstances entails the idea that free speech is a 'basic human right' possessed by each individual, and, as such, trumps the interests of the society or group, including my neighbour.

In the theater there is often a tension, almost a contradiction, between the way real people would think and behave, and a kind of imposed dramaticness.

From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.

'Shakespeare in Love' was a particularly happy film.

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

To be in love with Debo Devonshire is hardly a distinction.

I've got no interest in educating or instructing people.

One doesn't want one's democracy to behave like a dictatorial or fascistic police. One doesn't.

The fact is that people are attracted to new work and by new work.

After all these years, I definitely associate having a pen in my hand with having an ashtray just out of eye line.

The idea that public safety, the safety of the innocent, is an absolute which trumps every other consideration, is tacitly abandoned in the way we live.

I'm vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes.