6 Tom Stoppard Quotes on Language

Tom Stoppard quotes on language

13. Language is a finite instrument crudely applied to an infinity of ideas, and one consequence of the failure to take account of this is that modern philosophy has made itself ridiculous by analysing such statements as, 'This is a good bacon sandwich,' or, 'Bedser had a good wicket.'

24. I never got used to the way the house Trots fell into the jargon back in Grimsby - I mean, on any other subject, like the death of the novel, or the sex life of the editor's secretary, they spoke ordinary English, but as soon as they started trying to get me to join the strike it was as if their brains had been taken out and replaced by one of those little golf-ball things you get in electric typewriters... 'Betrayal'... 'Confrontation'... 'Management'... My God, you'd need a more supple language than that to describe an argument between two amoebas.

32. I'm showing an interest in your work. I thought you liked me showing an interest in your work. My showing. Save the gerund and screw the whale.

36. I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.

49. Herzen: Marx is a bourgeois from the anus up. Natalie : Alexander! I won't have that word... Herzen: Sorry, middle-class.

51. Turgenev: The names for things don't come first. Words stagger after, hopelessly trying to become the sensation.