Tom Stoppard Quotes

A man is crazy who writes a secret in any other way than one which will conceal it from the vulgar.

I appreciate your giving my book -- and in no small way, me -- a chance. To thank you, I really wanted to acknowledge all of you in the book. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough room for each name. So I've put in a code name that stands for all of you reading this book. The name is 'Mom.' It will be our little secret. So when you see 'Mom' in the acknowledgments, you'll know I'm really talking about you. And don't let my mother try to tell you otherwise.

Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality.

I chose to deal with the science of cryptography. Cryptography began in mathematics. Codes were developed, even from Caesar's time, based on number theory and mathematical principles. I decided to use those principles and designed a work that is encoded.

To me, our music is like Jamaican stuff - if they can't hear it, they're not supposed to hear it. It's not for them if they can't understand it.

I like double entendre because then the people who get it enjoy it, and the people who don't get it don't know about it.

If I asked for a cup of coffee, someone would search for the double meaning.

In our hands, even the straightest lyric sounded shady.

The number 143 means 'I love you.' It takes one letter to say 'I' and four letters to say 'love' and three letters to say 'you.' One hundred and forty-three. 'I love you.' Isn't that wonderful?

I certainly wouldn't pay for a ticket to watch a math equation.

I love that moment in writing when language falls short. There is something more there. A larger body. Even by the failure of words I begin to detect its dimensions. As I work the prose, shift the verbs, look for new adjectives, a different rhythm, syntax, something new begins to come to the surface.

Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner. BENEDICK Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains. BEATRICE I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would not have come. BENEDICK You take pleasure then in the message? BEATRICE Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point ... You have no stomach, signior: fare you well. Exit BENEDICK Ha! 'Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner;' there's a double meaning in that... (Much Ado About Nothing)

Clothes are but a symbol of something hid deep beneath.

What Tarquin the Proud said in his garden with the poppy blooms was understood by the son but not by the messenger.

My clothes are put together out of different basic elements so that a woman can express the way she wants to look, transform, metamorphosize herself not as the woman I decided but as she herself wants to be.

You have with you the book you were reading in the cafe, which you are eager to continue, so that you can then hand it on to her, to communicate again with her through the channel dug by others' words, which, as they are uttered by an alien voice, by the voice of that silent nobody made of ink and typographical spacing, can become yours and hers, a language, a code between the two of you, a means to exchange signals and recognize each other.

A pun calls the meaning of a word into question, and it upsets us tremendously. We laugh because suddenly we find out we're not going to get killed. I think a lot of things work that way with photographs.

Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.

Just as the witticism brings two very different real objects under one concept, the pun brings two different concepts, by the assistance of accident, under one word.

We wore our safety pins on the inside of our clothes.

Is it a form of social play that underneath the words people say, there is a different conversation going on?

It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.

Yeah I did put my clothes on, but my clothes took off... Could it be my clothes are putting me on??

I never get bored, because there’s always different puzzles, I’m wearing different clothes, there’s different contestants, there’s different prizes.

The last thing the world needs is another boring person or another boring brand, so embrace all the things that make you different. Alter your clothes all you want, but don't you dare alter your inner freak - she's got your back as much as I do.