We’re actors. We’re the opposite of people.
Meaning of the quote
In this quote, Tom Stoppard is saying that actors are not like ordinary people. Actors play different roles and pretend to be someone else, while regular people are just themselves. Actors have to learn to think, speak, and act like the characters they are playing, which makes them very different from regular people who don't have to do that. Stoppard is suggesting that the job of an actor is to become the opposite of a normal person.
More quotes from Tom Stoppard
The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
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It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
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Good things, when short, are twice as good.
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It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing.
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James Joyce – an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.
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I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.
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Back in the East you can’t do much without the right papers, but with the right papers you can do anything The believe in papers. Papers are power.
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The days of the digital watch are numbered.
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If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.
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My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.
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Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.
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The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe – responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.
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We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.
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Life in a box is better than no life at all… I expect.
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Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up.
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The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
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Get me inside any boardroom and I’ll get any decision I want.
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I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
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If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.
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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.
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We’re actors. We’re the opposite of people.
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Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.
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My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.
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Eternity’s a terrible thought. I mean, where’s it all going to end?
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A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar – you pretend it’s not there.
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A healthy attitude is contagious but don’t wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
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Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it.
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It’s better to be quotable than to be honest.
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Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
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Life is a gamble, at terrible odds – if it was a bet you wouldn’t take it.
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Every exit is an entry somewhere else.
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Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
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It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting.
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From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.
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