Tom Stoppard Art Quotations

I was an awful critic. I operated on the assumption that there was an absolute scale of values against which art could be measured. I didn't trust my own subjective responses.

Because theatre is a story-telling art form, we feel entitled to assume that the playwright got there before we got there.

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

You can't but know that if you can capture the emotions of the audience as well as their minds, the play will work better, because it's a narrative art form.

Art cannot be subordinate to its subject, otherwise it is not art but biography.

You're familiar with the tragedies of antiquity, are you? The great homicidal classics?

Imagination without skill gives us contemporary art.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

To the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into one of two categories: (1) things that need to be fixed, and (2) things that will need to be fixed after you've had a few minutes to play with them. Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

"The [London] Times" has published no rumours; it's only reported facts, namely that other, less responsible papers are publishing certain rumours.

A circle is the longest distance to same point.

Nowadays, an artist is someone who makes art mean the things he does.

I doubt that art needed Ruskin any more than a moving train needs one of its passengers to shove it.