You don't sit down and write a wish list about the person you are going to fall violently in love with. It just doesn't work like that. Stephen Fry More Quotes by Stephen Fry More Quotes From Stephen Fry The worst of this sorry bunch of semi-educated losers are those who seem to glory in being irritated by nouns becoming verbs. How dense and deaf to language development do you have to be? If you don’t like nouns becoming verbs, then for heaven’s sake avoid Shakespeare who made a doing-word out of a thing-word every chance he got. He TABLED the motion and CHAIRED the meeting in which nouns were made verbs Stephen Fry language-development sorry heaven Wit can be beautiful, because it expresses and distills an idea. Stephen Fry wit beautiful ideas Life is sometimes novel-shaped, mocking the efforts of those authors who, in an effort to make their novels life-shaped, spurn the easy symmetry and cheap resonance of reality. Stephen Fry effort writing reality I was happy there. Which is to say I was not unhappy there. Unhappiness and happiness I have always been able to carry about with me, irrespective of place and people, because I have never joined in. Stephen Fry able unhappy people Between funny and witty Falls the shadow Stephen Fry shadow witty fall Picture this scene. A critic arrives at the gates of heaven. 'And what did you do?' asks Saint Peter. 'Well', says the dead soul. 'I criticised things'. 'I beg your pardon?' 'You know, other people wrote things, performed things, painted things and I said stuff like, "thin and unconvincing", "turgid and uninspired", "competent and serviceable,"...you know'. Stephen Fry soul heaven people You should give up.' 'Why?' 'For one thing, you'll live longer.' 'Oh, you don't live longer. It just seems longer. Stephen Fry giving-up should seems I remember nothing of this, no ambulance rides, nothing. Nothing between switching out the bedside lamp and the sudden indignity of rebirth: the slaps, the brightness, the tubing, the speed, the urgent insistence that I be choked back into breathing life. I have felt so sorry for babies ever since. Stephen Fry breathing-life sorry baby Part of life is learning what to be ashamed of and what to be proud of. Stephen Fry ashamed proud life-is I was at a dinner party many years ago,sitting along from Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not just between courses,but between mouthfuls. An American woman watched in disbelief. "And you so intelligent!" "Excuse me?" said tom "Knowing those things are going to kill you" she said "and still you do it." "How differently I might behave" Tom said, "if immortality were an option Stephen Fry party intelligent years History is not the story of strangers, aliens from another realm; it is the story of us had we been born a little earlier. History is memory; we have to remember what it is like to be a Roman, or a Jacobite or a Chartist or even - if we dare, and we should dare - a Nazi. History is not abstraction, it is the enemy of abstraction. Stephen Fry memories history enemy Come back, and do that thing, be lovely to each-other. Stephen Fry lovely friends friendship At least 260 species of animal have been noted exhibiting homosexual behavior but only one species of animal ever, so far as we know, has exhibited homophobic behavior - and that's the human being. Stephen Fry gay behavior animal Nudity is a deep worry if you have a body like a bin bag full of yoghurt, which I have. Stephen Fry bags body worry And of course you are mad, if by a madman we mean a mind that questions and rejects every civilized norm. Stephen Fry mad depression mean How can one not be fond of something that the Daily Mail despises? Stephen Fry daily-mail despise mail I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathesome and inhumane. Stephen Fry paper would-be writing The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese. That, in erotic terms, is the Catholic church, in a nutshell. Stephen Fry erotic catholic people The other man's arse is always cleaner! Stephen Fry cleaners arses men I am magnificently prepared for the long littleness of life. There is diddley-squat for me to look forward to. Zilch, zero, zip-all, sweet lipperty-pipperty nothing. The only thought that will give me the energy to carry on is that someone has a life which would be diminished by my departure from it. Stephen Fry zero sweet long
