Quotes by Tom Stoppard

I think that the present is worth attention, one shouldn’t sacrifice it to future conceptions of, of this future or that future.

I write out of my intellectual experience.

I was delighted to not go to university. I couldn’t wait to be out of education.

I don’t act, I don’t direct, I don’t design.

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

I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.

Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it.

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.

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.

From as long as, literally as far back as I can remember I’ve liked puns, word jokes, I can literally recall looking at a comic at the age of six or seven and I remember what I enjoyed and what it was precisely and how the joke worked.