The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
I’m a conservative kind of person. I don’t think rightwing is quite the same thing. But I acknowledge my conservatism of temperament.
I write for film or, in this case, television when I haven’t got a play cooking.
I like pop music. I consider rock ‘n’ roll to be a branch of pop music.
I don’t think Stoppardian has a precise definition.
I’m so grateful to grab hold of something that wants to be a play. It doesn’t happen very often. I don’t have unwritten plays waiting for their turn.
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.
I’ve got no interest in educating or instructing people.
I’ve seldom minded other people’s opinions, but the other side of that coin is that I’ve seldom been interested by them, um their opinions about me I mean.
I don’t keep a diary and I throw away nearly all the paper I might have kept. I don’t keep an archive. There’s something worrying about my make-up that I try to leave no trace of myself apart from my plays.
For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next time I write a play I will be revealed as someone who is no good at all.
I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.
You can’t but know that if you can capture the emotions of the audience as well as their minds, the play will work better, because it’s a narrative art form.
The whole philosophy of modern times is to dissolve distinctions between individuals and deal with them as large collections of people. It’s essentially self-interested on the part of authority.
The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe – responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.
It was a different planet in 1967, the Broadway theatre. It had a little ashtray clamped to the back of every seat and the author got 10% of the gross.
If the audience is made to do not enough work, they resent it without knowing it. Too much and they get lost. There’s a perfect pace to be found. And a perfect place that is different for every line of the play.
We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.
As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that.
We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.