We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

"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.