Tom Stoppard Quotes

It's wonderful to be able to sit down and write a play.

I've always known that writing plays is very difficult, because I've written three or four that have never been produced.

I think if you're writing a play, it should be its own end game; you'll never get to do a good one unless you know it's not a blueprint for a film; you're not going to get the action right and the story right.

Yeah, I have the detail-obsessed, controlling personality of a novelist, but I somehow ended up writing plays.

Lizzy Weiss is such a great writer, and she really writes for the performances.

For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence.

When you're writing plays, it's possible to believe you don't have any real world skill. When you're adapting, it is really all about the mechanics, so you feel closer to, I don't know, an accountant or someone who has a body of information. It's not all about temperament.

Choosing to write a play is some kind of surrender. I don't make an outline. I sit and work, and suddenly the door opens, and out it comes.

What really happened was one day I decided to write a new kind of play.

I became a playwright and screenwriter. Italian-Americans were my particular specialty. I liked the way they talked. There was something free in it.

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.

I write plays instinctively. I don't like writing movie scripts.

Writing a play, you have to retain it all in your head - you need more time. With prose, you can snatch an hour here, an hour there.

I've written a couple screenplays and half-finished plays.

I wish I could remember how to write a play. I can't remember how they happened.

I would like to write a play.

Writing plays, I've always felt a little like I'm guessing - less sure of what's good and what's not good. I think that's because it's not a complete work of art.

I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general.

When you write for a show that's not yours, your job is to hear the voices of the characters and write as best you can for those voices.

The great pleasure for me in writing short stories is the fierce, elegant challenge.

It's hard to find a play that's right for me to do. Rather than waiting around for the right script to come along, I decided to write one myself.

I thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories.

I get passionate about certain subjects, and then I'll write a whole play around it.

I really believe that studying organization, even in the form of studying detective story organization, is very, very valuable for a playwright, a budding playwright.

I want to write a play. I'd like to do an original musical. I should probably put together a poetry collection.