Tom Stoppard

The theatre is a place where we can all be ourselves, even if we're not.

The only thing that matters is the story.

I'm not a philosopher, I'm a playwright.

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

It's all to do with the heat death of the universe.

We are all doomed to repeat the past unless we learn from it.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

The world is a madhouse, and we are all inmates.

The only thing that makes life worth living is the pursuit of happiness.

The only thing that makes life bearable is art.

We're actors. We're the opposite of people.

I can understand someone bothering to go to all the trouble of saying death to us, but why bother saying it to death?

Death is not anything... death is not... It's the absence of presence, nothing more... the endless time of never coming back... a gap you can't see.

Words, words, words.

Life is a gamble at terrible odds - if it was a bet, you wouldn't take it.

The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.

Revolution is an instrument, like a party whistle, that you use to rouse the rabble.

I'm with you on the free press. It's the newspapers I can't stand.

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation.