It's very common for people to recommend something to me because they're going on what I've already written, when, what really is the case, is that you want to write about something you haven't written about, in ways that you haven't done before.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of exploring new ideas rather than repeating past themes in writing.
Tom Stoppard expresses the notion that when people suggest topics to him, they often base their recommendations on his previous work. However, he believes that true creativity and writing should focus on uncharted territories, pushing the boundaries of what has already been explored and engaging in new forms of expression.
In practice
A writer might use this quote in a workshop about finding one's unique voice.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
With celestial sight, trials impossible to change become possible to endure.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
My chief study all my life has been to lighten misfortunes and multiply pleasures, as far as human nature can.
Remember, the greatest gift to give people your enlightenment, to share it. It has to be the greatest.
You can't buy a good reputation; you must earn it.
Faith draws the poison from every grief, takes the sting from every loss, and quenches the fire of every pain, and only faith can do it.
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