Tom Stoppard

"All your life, you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it is like being ambushed by a grotesque."

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

"The truth of the matter is that I used to be much more - as it were - shy. Now I don't care!"

"The printed word is no longer as in demand as when I was of the age of pupils or even at the age of the teachers teaching them."

"Chekhov was capable of casually tossing off deplorable comments in his letters, combined with a very modern anger against anti-Semitism."

"Every exit is an entry somewhere else."

"I don't act, I don't direct, I don't design."

"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."

"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."

"Like almost everything else from the West, the Romantic Revolution arrived late in Russia."

"Theater in New York is nearer to the street. In London, you have to go deep into the building, usually, to reach the place where theater happens. On Broadway, only the fire doors separate you from the sidewalk, and you're lucky if the sound of a police car doesn't rip the envelope twice a night."