Stephen Fry Quotes
[On libraries] What's great about them is that anybody can go into them and find a book and borrow it free of charge and read it. They don't have to steal it from a bookshop... You know when you're young, you're growing up, they're almost sexually exciting places because books are powerhouses of knowledge, and therefore they're kind of slightly dark and dangerous. You see books that kind of make you go 'Oh!'
Quotes to Explore
-
Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity.
-
After Brown, I went to Duke, to a Ph.D. program in American literature. My dad's an English professor. After a year there, I was like, 'Jesus. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be in the library.' So I pulled the ripcord, and that was it.
-
I think that every so-called history book and film biography should be prefaced by the statement that what follows is the author's rendition of events and circumstances.
-
I'm so tired of this vision of fashion of a diva with a big ego, and you think of big dark glasses to be pretentious and keep far away from the people.
-
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
-
You have to understand that while I pre-plot the meta story of a given book, I often have no idea of what will happen on the next page, let alone the next chapter. That's what makes it fun for me; I write the books the same way many people read them.
-
It's easier to release an ebook than a print book.
-
'Perfect' is about a set-up that looks perfect from the outside - beautiful country house, beautiful wife and mother, everything where it should be - and the deep fissures that, in fact, lie beneath that. 'Perfect' was partly a response to the shock of my first book, 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry,' being a success.
-
My favorite book in life is 'A Wrinkle In Time,' which I read before high school. It was my first introduction into the meeting of science and spirit and the universe and big thoughts and all of those interesting New Age-y concepts. It made everything make sense to me and opened up my mind.
-
When I finished graduate school, I had a master's of fine arts from a prestigious institution, a manuscript that would eventually become my first published book - and almost no marketable skills.
-
I didn't belong to the sort of family where the children's classics were laid on. I went to the public library and read everything I could get my hands on.
-
Even as the Internet has revived hope of a universal library and Google seems to promise an answer to every query, books have remained a dark region in the universe of information. We want books to be as accessible and searchable as the Web. On the other hand, we still want them to be books.
-
The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone.
-
The Victorian language of flowers began with the publication of 'Le Language des Fleurs,' written by Charlotte de Latour and printed in Paris in 1819. To create the book - which was a list of flowers and their meanings - de Latour gathered references to flower symbolism throughout poetry, ancient mythology, and even medicine.
-
I suppose not everyone has a dad who wrote a book saying he didn't believe in the Parliamentary road to socialism.
-
I like a person who knows how to say something dark at a very dark moment. The darker the moment and the darker the comic, the better. Something that is so wrong on all levels.
-
The Bible is the book of my life. It's the book I live with, the book I live by, the book I want to die by.
-
I've had people turn up to book signings with knives, with guns.
-
Crankish attacks on the freedom to read are common at present. When backed and coordinated by organized groups, they become sinister.
-
One of our things is that money follows; it does not lead. So we want people that are fired up and passionate about their mission... and people that aren't so married to spreadsheets and thinking that kind of voodoo controls the future. Because it doesn't.
-
Hey sky, take off your hat, I'm on my way!
-
Grace works that way. It's a kind word from a gentle person with an impossible prayer. It's a force sometimes transmitted best hand to hand in a dark place.
-
[On libraries] What's great about them is that anybody can go into them and find a book and borrow it free of charge and read it. They don't have to steal it from a bookshop... You know when you're young, you're growing up, they're almost sexually exciting places because books are powerhouses of knowledge, and therefore they're kind of slightly dark and dangerous. You see books that kind of make you go 'Oh!'
