Tom Stoppard

“It is a mistake to think that cleverness is the same as honest.”

“It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.”

“If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.”

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”

“Every exit is an entry somewhere else.”

“A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.”

“I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.”

“We're more spectators than actors in the drama of our own lives.”

“Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.”

“Life is a gamble, at terrible odds - if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.”

“I think that age is a very high price to pay for maturity.”

“The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.”

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”

“It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.”

“Happiness is the moment when you cease to be greedy.”

“A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.”

“I'm the playwright, I'm not the answer-wright.”