Tom Stoppard
198 citations

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen. ✨ 'You can't help being what you write'. Interview with Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. September 5, 2008.

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