I think of myself as a theater animal instead of an intellectual animal.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes valuing creative expression and performance over purely intellectual pursuits.
Tom Stoppard's quote suggests that he identifies more with the emotional and dynamic aspects of theater than with the analytical and cognitive aspects associated with intellectualism. It highlights the importance of creativity, passion, and the human experience in the field of theater, affirming that art can evoke feelings and connections that transcend mere intellectual thought.
In practice
During a film festival, this quote could be used to introduce a discussion about the role of creativity in cinema.
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.
All dress is fancy dress, is it not, except our natural skins?
Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.
Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy. (about Guernica).
Many great works of art, poetry, and music are inspired by astral memories. The desire to do noble, beautiful things here on Earth is also often a carryover of astral experiences between a person's earth lives.
The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago.
Jazz is what I play for a living.
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