If knowledge isn't self-knowledge it isn't doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing 'When Father Painted the Parlour'? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. 'She walks into beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.

"I fairly often find I'm with people who forget I don't quite belong in the world we're in" he says. In 2008 Stoppard was voted the number 76 on the Time 100 Time magazine's list of the most influential people in the world. " He acknowledges that he started off "as a language nerd" primarily enjoying linguistic and ideological playfulness feeling early in his career that journalism was far better suited for presaging political change than playwriting.

Sir Tom Stoppard OM CBE FRSL (born Tomáš Straussler; 3 July 1937) is a Czech-born British playwright knighted in 1997. Themes of human rights censorship and political freedom pervade his work along with exploration of linguistics and philosophy. He co-wrote the screenplays for Brazil and Shakespeare in Love and has received one Academy Award and four Tony Awards.