Tom Stoppard Quotes

It's communication - that's what theatre is all about.

Now, what we are not talking about, what you're really coming to, is what compromises one makes so that the listener understands somewhat of what you're doing, what you're trying to express.

The key to acting has much more to do with listening than with talking.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

Communication is about being effective, not always about being proper.

I would rather do a play because it's instantaneous. You go on the stage, and you know whether it's happening or not. Somebody asked me 'What is acting?' And I said, 'Acting is listening.' And if you ain't listening, nobody's listening.

For my next trick I will make everyone understand me.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

I think the hardest thing I've had to learn is that just because people might speak a certain way in real life doesn't mean it's engaging in the theater.

I am not good at making people understand certain things.

I can only do the best I can from what I read from the book, and hopefully it translates on camera.

The listener is the midwife in the difficult birth of the word.

If I wanted you to understand it, I would have explained it better.

If we go on explaining we shall cease to understand one another.

If you start trying to communicate ideas, I think you don't allow the audience to see themselves.

I look at you and I write down what I hear.

I really value words. I really try to illustrate and let people draw their own conclusions.

It's technically extremely difficult to get down what you really mean, not what you think you mean, or what you think sounds good, but what's really there, what you really have to express, in words that somehow convey that meaning in an approximate way.

When I speak it is in order to be heard.

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.

When a performance isn't working, it's usually because the actor is trying to do something and they're not able to express their idea very well. It's a muddled expression.

Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating.

Making noise is easy; making stuff people understand is an easy thing to do.

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.