Miriam Stoppard Quotes

A teaspoonful of semen contains the same amount of protein as the white of one egg. However, the consumption of semen can be much more fun. ~ Miriam Stoppard

I have three copies of the first edition, which sold in double figures, speaking loosely; there was a moment when Blond's 'Lord Malquist and Mr Moon' sold 67 copies, or some such number, in Venezuela - a mystery I never solved. I have never been to Venezuela. I remember going into Foyles' bookshop in 1966 and being gratified to see a stack of Malquist-and-Moons on the New Fiction table. I counted them; there were twelve. A week or two later I went in again; there they were. I counted them again; there were thirteen! I saw at once what was happening. People were leaving my book at bookshops. ~ Tom Stoppard

A smart wife is one who makes sure she spends so much that her husband can't afford another woman. ~ Miriam Defensor Santiago

Biography is the mesh through which real life escapes. ~ Tom Stoppard

An even, straight path is attractive. Its predictable routine perpetuates with no extra effort required. It becomes autopilot that leads to endless same old thing.

An uneven, windy path is unavoidable to many. Its unforeseen, exciting adventures require balance, adjustment, alertness and attention. A path that leads to a rewarding dream of your life. ~ Miriam Hurdle

For 10 years of my life, 3 times a day, I thanked the Lord for what I was about to receive and thanked him again for what I had just received, and then we lost touch and I suddenly thought, where is he now ~ Tom Stoppard

How the hell do I know what I find incredible? Credibility is an expanding field ... Sheer disbelief hardly registers on the face before the head is nodding with all the wisdom of instant hindsight. ~ Tom Stoppard

I have two garden parties a year to avoid going out to dinner. ~ Tom Stoppard

The whole philosophy of modern times is to dissolve distinctions between individuals and deal with them as large collections of people. It's essentially self-interested on the part of authority. ~ Tom Stoppard

I don't believe there is something called 'film' and something called 'theater,' and that words belong in the theater. Some rather bad films have few words in them; some good films have a lot of words in them. ~ Tom Stoppard

You can't treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires. ~ Tom Stoppard

I'm so grateful to grab hold of something that wants to be a play. It doesn't happen very often. I don't have unwritten plays waiting for their turn. ~ Tom Stoppard

Inside where nothing shows, I am the essence of a man spinning double-headed coins, and betting against himself in private atonement for an unremembered past. ~ Tom Stoppard

I don't even know what my voice is to this day. ~ Tom Stoppard

A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier. ~ Tom Stoppard

The fact is, I loved being English. I was very happy to be turned into an English schoolboy. ~ Tom Stoppard

What is the society we wish to protect? Is it the society of complete surveillance for the commonwealth? Is this the wealth we seek to have in common - optimal security at the cost of maximal surveillance? ~ Tom Stoppard

Time is short, life is short, there's a lot to know. So I skip the entertainers in the newspaper now. I just haven't got time. ~ Tom Stoppard

My only companion from the outside world during nineteen years of isolation has been my personal hatred of Thursday Next. It's kind of like the old me suddenly taking over, and I promised myself that this was how I would act if I ever saw you.'
'I have the same thing, but with Tom Stoppard,' I said.
'You'd kill Tom Stoppard?'
'Not at all. I promised myself many years ago that I would throw myself at his feet and scream "I'm not worthy!" if I ever met him, so now if we're ever at the same party or something, I have to be at pains to avoid him. It would be undignified, you see - for him and for me. ~ Jasper Fforde

As a child, I was airlifted out of the path of the Nazis. Unfortunately, I was parachuted into the path of the Japanese, but then I was airlifted again to India. ~ Tom Stoppard

The idea that public safety, the safety of the innocent, is an absolute which trumps every other consideration, is tacitly abandoned in the way we live. ~ Tom Stoppard

Theatre probably originated without texts, but by the time we get to the classical Greek period, theatre has become text-based. ~ Tom Stoppard

[Queen Victoria had been denouncing the Women's Rights movement] ... And after chloroform was introduced to ease the pains of childbirth, she demanded that it be used on her. Religious and medical conservatives were shocked. They said God had decreed that women must suffer in childbirth as atonement for the sins of Eve. But queen Victoria wouldn't accept this particular anti-woman's-rights dictum. She became one of the first women to use anesthesia during childbirth , and knighted Dr. James Simpson, the Scottish physician who developed this use of chloroform, though he was excommunicated by his church for doing so. ~ Miriam Gurko

If I had been asked to write 1,200 words for a newspaper tomorrow, on any subject, I would just do it rather than leave a white hole in the page. And I think it's a very healthy attitude to take to writing anything. ~ Tom Stoppard

In my mind he is a demon and a god
and I blame him, I blame him, I blame him
for the world I created on my own
as much as the one he built around me. ~ Miriam Joy

I went to an English school and was brought up in English. So I don't feel Czech. ~ Tom Stoppard

Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering. ~ Tom Stoppard

PLAYER : It costs little to watch, and little more if you happen to get caught up in the action, if that's your taste and times being what they are. ~ Tom Stoppard

You know, my dear, I insured my voice for fifty thousand dollars. ~ Miriam Hopkins

Can't you function unless you're losing? ~ Tom Stoppard

Even a Menno sheltered from the world knows not to stick her tongue into the mouth of a boy who owns an Air Supply record. You might stick your tongue into the mouth of a boy who owned some Emerson, Lake and Palmer, but you would not date him on a regular basis, or openly. ~ Miriam Toews

What drove me? I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that's been done by others before us. I didn't invent the language or mathematics I use. I make little of my own food, none of my own clothes. Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on. And a lot of us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow. It's about trying to express something in the only way that most of us know how-because we can't write Bob Dylan songs or Tom Stoppard plays. We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow. That's what has driven me. ~ Walter Isaacson

As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that. ~ Tom Stoppard

Followed her out the door and watched her walk down the road towards home, hers, and the bright yard light, and her own bed, and our parents, and I stood there for a long time because I didn't know where else to go.
I stood there long enough to feel the chill of the night. The sky was a blanket of stars.Indifferent.
I repeated the ancient song of Nezahualcoytl. I stood there long enough to hear my family singing. Why were they singing at two in the morning? I heard the hight, creaky voice of my mother and the off-key but persistent voices of my little brothers. ~ Miriam Toews

Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are ... condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one - that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost. A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; his two-fold security. ~ Tom Stoppard

And Miriam also refused to be approached. She was afraid of being set at nought, as by her own brothers. The girl was romantic in her soul. Everywhere was a Walter Scott heroine being loved by men with helmets or with plumes in their caps. She herself was something of a princess turned into a swine-girl in her own imagination. And she was afraid lest this boy, who, nevertheless, looked something like a Walter Scott hero, who could paint and speak French, and knew what algebra meant, and who went by train to Nottingham every day, might consider her simply as the swine-girl, unable to perceive the princess beneath; so she held aloof. ~ D.H. Lawrence