Tom Stoppard Quotes

I think we spend so much of our lives trying to pretend that we know what's going to happen next. In fact we don't. To recognize that we don't know even what will happen this afternoon and yet having the courage to move forward - that's one meaning of faith.

Don't plan too hard, because something much better might be out there.

Every time I've made a plan in my Hollywood acting career, something else has happened, so I've gotten out of the habit of trying to predict the future.

Just, you never know what the next day is going to bring. That goes for football, goes for off the field, and I gave up a long time ago trying to predict the future and trying to deal with things I couldn't deal with.

All great work is preparing yourself for the accident to happen.

I haven't tried to buffer myself. I like rolling the dice.

Losing both parents at a young age gave me a sense that you can't really control life - so you'd better live it while it's here. I stopped believing in a storybook existence a long time ago. All you can do is push in a direction and see what comes of it.

He that waits upon fortune, is never sure of a dinner.

Every time I do a talk show or something, I'll be like, 'I'm doing 'Chandelier,' right?' and they're like, 'No, you're doing a skit and three dances.' It's different every time. I never really know what I'm doing until the day before.

Who knows, I have always lived one day at a time. Probably more adventure and excitement.

I'm just working and having a good time and seeing what develops, which is so awesome, because you don't know what's going to happen, and I'm letting myself do that a lot more than I ever have.

I always leave room for serendipity and chance.

I'm kind of spoiled, but the great thing about life is that you never know what's around the corner.

Every day you wake up is an opportunity to go beyond, and that 's why I let my band go right now. For the first time in my life I'm just roaming around, vagabonding.

I stopped predicting the future a long time ago.

The only safe thing is to take a chance.

I am not preparing myself or my family for anything but life.

Hope is a risk that must be run.

Every time you hear someone read your book and liked your book, you're never sure whether that's going to follow with a similar remark from someone else. Perhaps I have low expectations, but whenever I hear someone say, 'I liked your book,' I don't know if it's going to happen again.

Acting is exciting. It is different every time you do it.

I'm all about taking chances. You have to ask yourself, if you're not taking any chances, are you actually even living? Every time you walk out of your door and you're out in the world, you take a chance on not coming back. That is the danger and the dynamic of being alive.

Living as an actor is rather like living life on the trapezes in a circus. Every time you jump on, you have to pray that, when the time comes for you to jump off, there is another trapeze swinging your way.

Some people only work to recorded music because it's so reliable and exactly the same every time, which is exactly why I don't.

You just do the best you can with what you've got... and sometimes magic strikes.

A wonderful but kind of a terrible truth about acting is that you actually get to a point where you become content with an impossible task: it is really impossible to properly prepare. You kind of have to start over every time.