“This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly. What we're trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might…travel.”

— Tom Stoppard , The Real Thing

Henry, Act II, scene V
The Real Thing (1982)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Tom Stoppard 116

British playwright 1937

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