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Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard Quotes

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Famous Tom Stoppard Quotes

“Once rehearsals are done the writer really doesn't have a function on the set. If the script is stabilized, then the writer becomes a celebrity tourist visiting the set, trying not to get in the way. It's very good for the ego, to go visit a film set if you are the writer, because they give you a special chair, and tell you where you can sit to watch the monitor. They make you feel special, but at the same time, they make it perfectly plain that you are irrelevant!”

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Author:Tom Stoppard
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“It's probably unprecedented for a filmmaker simply to take the writers' script and treat it as the instructions on the package. What really happens is you pretty much suppress your own instincts - and your own views on the matter - and write things the way filmmakers would like to have them, though the filmmakers often don't know what they want. They can only find out by reading what you do.”

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Author:Tom Stoppard
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“Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.”

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Book:Arcadia
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“The trouble is, I can't find a part of myself where you're not important. I write in order to be worth your while and to finance the way I want to live with you. Not the way you want to live. The way I want to live with you. Without you I wouldn't care. I'd eat tinned spaghetti and put on yesterday's clothes. But as it is I change my socks, and make money, and tart up Brodie's unspeakable drivel into speakable drivel so he can be an author too, like me.”

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Author:Tom Stoppard
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