Tom Stoppard Quotes

I can think of nothing that an audience won't understand. The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested, they understand anything in the world.

The best writing is not about the writer, the best writing is absolutely not about the writer, it's about us, it's about the reader.

There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don't really think most people really understand what they've seen.

Storytelling is about listening in any media.

For me, until I know that the audience really gets what I'm trying to communicate I'm not done.

If you respect the audience enough, they can take onboard many things.

Acted drama requires surrender of one's self, sympathetic absorption in the play as it develops.

There's nothing you can't tell to an audience, because they're all people who've had lives. The only thing they don't want to watch is someone who's really angry or out of control.'

It takes two guys to tell a story, paint a picture, so our audience can be entertained and brought into the match. You need to suck people in emotionally to a match, and it takes both parties to paint that picture.

At a certain point the audience shouldn't worry about catching every word and understanding every twist and turn, because at a certain point that's pretty much impossible.

An awful lot of storytelling isn't really about making people understand - it's about making people care.

Some TV shows are like really good novels in that there are enough episodes that you start to have your own feelings about how the characters should act. When the scriptwriters go slightly wrong, when they make the character make a left turn that he or she wouldn't do, you know enough about the characters to say, "No, that's not what she would do there. That's wrong." You can actually argue with a TV show in a way that you can't do as much with movie - you inhabit a TV show in the way you inhabit a novel.

It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it.

If I just gave you a piece of paper with the lyrics written down on it, it would mean something to you. It would tell you a story.

Explanations are clear but since no one to whom a thing is explained can connect the explanations with what is really clear, therefore clear explanations are not clear.

It is by love alone that we understand anything

I think you can use fiction to get inside people's minds.

anyone can understand anything. You just have to know how to present your information.

We have to listen to other people's stories. That's the thing. And that's the only way that we eventually get to know ourselves.

I think that it drives from an emotional connection with everybody that pulls you through all of those events, whether it's the events or what would be more the action, or I guess the visual effects side of it. So it always starts with me from - emotionally - 'Why do you care about the people who are going through what they're going through?' Because it takes a hell of a lot to put them through that. So you better care for them when they're doing it.

The writer is the midwife of understanding.

Storytelling bridges the generational gaps in ideology.

It is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know.

I'm a sci-fi fan, and I guess you have to let go of some of that at some point, and realize that as long as you're focused on telling a story that you care about, at the end of the day, that's what really matters, even to hard-core sci-fi fans.

How do you know who I am?' Denna grinned, almost laughed. 'To know Richard is to know who Kahlan is.