Director's Selected Quotes

“My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.”
— Tom Stoppard

“I think theatre ought to be theatrical . . . you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it's — there's always some kind of ambush involved in the experience. You're being ambushed by an unexpected word, or by an elephant falling out of the cupboard, whatever it is.”
— Tom Stoppard

“A couple of years ago I went to see a man who had peacocks in his garden and he was telling me that when peacocks are new they tend to run away, and he was shaving one morning and looked out of the window and he saw…his pet peacock leap over the garden hedge and make off down the road. Peacocks being rare birds, he dropped his razor and, barefoot and lathered, he pursued it. . . . It crossed the main road but on the other side of the road he caught it. He picked it up and then cars started going by and he couldn't get back and he stood there for a little while watching these people in cars.
I don't write about him, I don't write about the peacock, what I write about is two people who drive by in a car. . . . And they see this fellow in pyjamas with shaving cream on his face, barefoot, carrying a peacock, walking down the road. And they see this fellow for about five eighths of a second—never again, and they are never quite sure exactly what they saw.”
— Tom Stoppard

From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.
— Tom Stoppard

About Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard is considered one of our greatest living dramatists; a position he has held since his early success with his masterpiece, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. His comic genius, his dazzling agility with words and his tremendous intellect have been celebrated throughout the theatrical and literary worlds for almost four decades. Stoppard’s other plays include Jumpers, Travesties, Enter a Free Man, Hapgood, Arcadia, India Ink and The Invention of Love, among many others. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties and The Real Thing all won Tony Awards. The Invention of Love won him his seventh London Evening Standard Theatre Award.

Tom Stoppard’s canon includes many radio plays, novels and film adaptations. His newest work, The Coast of Utopia, will make its American premiere at Lincoln Center this fall.