Stephen Fry

“An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.”

“It only takes a room of Americans for the English and Australians to realise how much we have in common.”

“There is so much we can learn from TV. It's a window on the world.”

“Read it wisely, Little One, for the power of ignorance is great.”

“I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.”

“It does not suit the world to hear that people who are leading a high life, an enviable life, a privileged life are as miserable most days as anybody else, despite the fact that it must be obvious they would be - given that we are all agreed that money and fame do not bring happiness. Instead the world would prefer to enjoy the idea, against what it knows to be true, that wealth and fame do in fact insulate and protect against misery and it would rather we shut up if we are planning to indicate otherwise.”

“[his healing skills] ..lay in the ability to comfort, to comfort in the proper sense, to make strong, to fortify”

“Now, bipolar disorder, it goes on a spectrum. There's very severe conditions of it and there are milder ones. I'm lucky enough that it's reasonably mild in my case.”

“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what.", The Guardian, 5 June 2005]”

“He's your enemy, Donald!''He most certainly is not,' said Trefusis. 'Not unless I say so. He may dearly want to be my enemy, he may beg on bended knee for open hostility of the most violent kind, but it takes two to tangle. I choose my own enemies.”

“I don't watch TV. I think it destroys the art of talking about oneself.”

“I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.”

“Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.”

“When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel.”

“They are just 100 per cent bear, whereas human beings feel we're not 100 per cent human, that we're always letting ourselves down. We're constantly striving towards something, to some fulfilment.”

“Having a great intellect is no path to being happy.”

“A true thing, poorly expressed, is a lie.”

“My parents were marvelously educated people.”

“lectures broke into one's day and were clearly a terrible waste of time, necessary no doubt if you were reading law or medicine or some other vocational subject, but in the case of English, the natural thing to do was talk a lot, listen to music, drink coffee and wine, read books, and go to plays, perhaps be in plays…”

“I am a lover of truth, a worshiper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.”