A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
Tom Stoppard

A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
Tom Stoppard

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
Tom Stoppard

Back in the East you can't do much without the right papers, but with the right papers you can do anything The believe in papers. Papers are power.
Tom Stoppard

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.
Tom Stoppard

Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?
Tom Stoppard

Every exit is an entry somewhere else.
Tom Stoppard

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

Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want.
Tom Stoppard

Good things, when short, are twice as good.
Tom Stoppard


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

I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
Tom Stoppard

If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.
Tom Stoppard

If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.
Tom Stoppard

It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing.
Tom Stoppard

It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
Tom Stoppard

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.
Tom Stoppard

It's better to be quotable than to be honest.
Tom Stoppard

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
Tom Stoppard

James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.
Tom Stoppard