Stephen Fry Quotes
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I said it before and I’ll say it again: books are dead, plays are dead, poems are dead: there’s only movies. Music is still okay, because music is sound track. Ten, fifteen years ago, every arts student wanted to be a novelist or a playwright. I’d be amazed if you could find a single one now with such a dead-end ambition. They all want to make movies. Not write movies. You don’t write movies. You make movies.
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One of the most unattractive human traits, and so easy to fall into, is resentment at the sudden shared popularity of a previously private pleasure. Which of us hasn't been annoyed when a band, writer, artist or television series that had been a minority interest of ours has suddenly achieved mainstream popularity? When it was at a cult level we moaned at the philistinism of a world that didn't appreciate it, and now that they do appreciate it we're all resentful and dog-in-the-manger about it.
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There can't be that many individual souls. Not souls like mine. There isn't room. There can't be.
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I don't watch television, I think it destroys the art of talking about oneself.
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In a dung heap, even a plastic bead can gleam like a sapphire.
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...as absurd and dishonest as claiming that the trouble with computer games is that they stop people watching television.
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When you take a lot of cocaine powder you tend to take a lot of alcohol with it as well, so for many years really I never went out without at least four or five grams of cocaine powder.
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It's now very common to hear people say 'I'm rather offended by that'.
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It was behaviour that I thought not far from racism, sexism or any other kind of prejudice or snobbery. 'Because you are not cute, I do not want to know you' was, to me, hardly different from suggesting 'because you are gay, I dislike you
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Skepsis. I am a true skeptic, born under the noble sign of skepsis, the sign of the man who knows that all astrology is absolutely and without reservation the bullest of bullsh*t that ever there was. It is a senseless delusion that does not even have the benefit of being harmless fun. It is a harmful bore. Harmful to the human spirit, harmful to the dignity and wonder of the real universe and the real power of the mind to think for itself. I hate astrology with a fervor that is almost frightening. - Stephen Fry (when asked what sign he would be if he could create his own zodiac)
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Money and fame are trashy and don't guarantee happiness, but we all refuse really to know it.
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Money no longer has any meaning. Civilization is coming to an end. If not the destruction of the world, it's an endless stalemate.
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People still don't get how astounding Darwinism is. People think what shocked everybody was that Charles Darwin seemed to be saying we had descended from apes.
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I went to Cambridge and thought I would stay there. I thought I would quietly grow tweed in a corner somewhere and become a Don or something.
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A month's salary, deep regret, the telephone number of some foul rehab clinic and my lance was free.
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I like people who are as unlike me as possible, which is not an expression of self disgust or self hatred, but it's just that you know you obviously particularly admire things that you recognize yourself as not having.
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I have a dark and dreadful secret. I write poetry... I believe poetry is a primal impulse within all of us. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it.
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I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.
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Knowing what I now know I would never have done anything so fatuous; but then I never would have known what I know now had I not.
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The part of [Oscar] Wilde was exceptionally important to me; the man, his achievements, his wisdom, but his downfall, his disgrace and the tragic and bitter end to it have always fascinated, appalled and attracted me since childhood. It was he who first in some measure vindicated my sexuality.
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I shouldn't be saying this, high treason really, but I sometimes wonder if Americans aren't fooled by our accent into detecting a brilliance that may not really be there.
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Literature is the only access to truth we have on this planet.
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You've just had the most imponderable joy of watching charlieissocoollike, which makes you, like, cool.
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Philosophy is an odd thing... There is no particular Socratic or Dimechian or Kantian way to live your life. They don't offer ethical codes and standards by which to live your life.