A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Tom Stoppard
All your life you live so close to the 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.
Tom Stoppard
A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.
Tom Stoppard
By this time tomorrow we might have forgotten everything we ever knew. That's a thought, isn't it? We'd be right back where we started - improvising.
Tom Stoppard
Fear! The crack that might flood your brain with light!
Tom Stoppard
If I might make a suggestion – shut up and sit down. Stop being perverse.
Tom Stoppard
Inside where nothing shows, I am the essence of a man spinning double-headed coins, and betting against himself in private atonement for an unremembered past.
Tom Stoppard
It is a defect of God’s humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.
Tom Stoppard
Now for a handful of guilders I happen to have a private and uncut performance of the rape of the Sabine Women – or rather woman, or rather Alfred -Get your skirt on Alfred!
Tom Stoppard
...the single assumption that makes our existence viable - that somebody is watching....
Tom Stoppard
We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us; leaving nothing but a memory of the smell of smoke and a presumption that our eyes once watered.
Tom Stoppard
We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.
Tom Stoppard
We’re actors! We’re the opposite of people.
Tom Stoppard
We're overawed, that's our trouble. When it comes to the point we succumb to their personalities...
Tom Stoppard