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The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

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7.173 Caskie Stinnett 1911—<br />

A diplomat...is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look<br />

forward to the trip.<br />

‘Out <strong>of</strong> the Red’ (1960) ch. 4<br />

7.174 Tom Stoppard 1937—<br />

It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.<br />

‘Jumpers’ (1972) act 1.<br />

<strong>The</strong> House <strong>of</strong> Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe—responsibility<br />

without power, the prerogative <strong>of</strong> the eunuch throughout the ages.<br />

‘Lord Malquist and Mr Moon’ (1966) pt. 6.<br />

A foreign correspondent is someone who lives in foreign parts and corresponds, usually in the<br />

form <strong>of</strong> essays containing no new facts. Otherwise he’s someone who flies around from hotel to<br />

hotel and thinks that the most interesting thing about any story is the fact that he has arrived to<br />

cover it.<br />

‘Night and Day’ (1978) act 1<br />

<strong>The</strong> media. It sounds like a convention <strong>of</strong> spiritualists.<br />

‘Night and Day’ (1978) act 1<br />

I’m with you on the free press. It’s the newspapers I can’t stand.<br />

‘Night and Day’ (1978) act 1<br />

Comment is free but facts are on expenses.<br />

‘Night and Day’ (1978) act 2<br />

You’re familiar with the tragedies <strong>of</strong> antiquity, are you? <strong>The</strong> great homicidal classics?<br />

‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ (1967) act 1<br />

All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner <strong>of</strong> your eye,<br />

and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.<br />

‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ (1967) act 1<br />

I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without<br />

the love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can’t do you love and rhetoric<br />

without the blood. Blood is compulsory—they’re all blood, you see.<br />

‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’ (1967) act 1<br />

Eternity’s a terrible thought. I mean, where’s it all going to end?<br />

‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ (1967) act 2<br />

<strong>The</strong> bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.<br />

‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ (1967) act 2.<br />

Life is a gamble at terrible odds—if it was a bet, you wouldn’t take it.<br />

‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ (1967) act 3<br />

Death is not anything...death is not...It’s the absence <strong>of</strong> presence, nothing more...the endless<br />

time <strong>of</strong> never coming back...a gap you can’t see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no

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