613 Quotes by Stephen Fry

People (even Americans) often find it difficult to talk about themselves.  Poetry gives them a kind of verbal costume in which they can express themselves with more dignity and confidence than the common dress of everyday speech will allow.

My first words, as I was being born [...] I looked up at my mother and said, 'that's the last time I'm going up one of those.

No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.

Having a great intellect is no path to being happy.

There were people who believed their opportunities to live a fulfilled life were hampered by the number of Asians in England, by the existance of a royal family, by the volume of traffic that passed by their house, by the malice of trade unions, by the power of callous employers, by the refusal of the health service to take their condition seriously, by communism, by capitalism, by atheism, by anything, in fact, but their own futile, weak-minded failure to get a fucking grip.

I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today -- whatever that may be. In my teenage years, his writings awoke me to the possibilities of language. His rhythms, tropes, tricks and mannerisms are deep within me.But more than that, he taught me something about good nature. It is enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind.

Compromise is a stalling between two fools.

The alarm in the morning? Well, I have an old tape of Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a perfectly transcendent version in Shubert's seventh symphony. And I've rigged it up so that at exactly 7:30 every morning it falls from the ceiling onto my face.

Sex without smiling is as sickly and as base as vodka and tonic without ice.