Happy Birthday, Tom Stoppard, born 3 July 1937.
Nine Quotes
- What are a friend’s books for if not to be borrowed?
- 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.
- Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
- I’m going to be dead before I read the books I’m going to read.
- We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.
- The whole notion of journalism being an institution whose fundamental purpose is to educate and inform and even, one might say, elevate, has altered under commercial pressure, perhaps, into a different kind of purpose, which is to divert and distract and entertain.
- I read for interest and enjoyment, and when I cease to enjoy it I stop.
- My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.
- I cannot say that I write with any social objective. One writes because one loves writing, really.
Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright. Knighted in 1997, his well-known plays include Arcadia, Professional Foul, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He co-wrote the screenplays for Brazil, The Russia House, and Shakespeare in Love. He has won one Academy Award and four Tony Awards.
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