"I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.“

-Tom Stoppard

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Tom Stoppard quote about work: "I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocrac..."

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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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"Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society."

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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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"The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist."

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"What I learned growing up on the farm was a way of life that was centered on hard work, and on faith and on thrift. Those values have stuck with me my whole life."

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