Tom Stoppard

Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter.

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
I was an awful critic. I operated on the assumption that there was an absolute scale of values against which art could be measured. I didn't trust my own subjective responses.
When I was 20, the idea of having a play on anywhere was just beyond my dreams.
Every exit is an entry somewhere else.
When Auden said his poetry didn't save one Jew from the gas chamber, he'd said it all.
Success is a sort of metaphysical experience. I live exactly as I did before - only on a slightly bigger scale. Naturally, I won't be corrupted. I'll sit there in my Rolls, uncorrupted, and tell my chauffeur, uncorruptedly, where to go.
A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
In January 1962, when I was the author of one and a half unperformed plays, I attended a student production of 'The Birthday Party' at the Victoria Rooms in Bristol. Just before it began, I realised that Harold Pinter was sitting in front of me.
If I had been asked to write 1,200 words for a newspaper tomorrow, on any subject, I would just do it rather than leave a white hole in the page. And I think it's a very healthy attitude to take to writing anything.
I think I give the impression of being a romantic, and I think inside I'm quite severe. But some might say they had the opposite impression of me.