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Great Writers, I Discovered, Were Not To Be Bowed Down Before And Worshipped, But Embraced And Befriended. Their Names Resounded Through History Not Because They Had Massive Brows And Thought Deep Incomprehensible Thoughts, But Because They Opened Windows In The Mind, They Put Their Arms Round You And Showed You Things You Always Knew But Never Dared To Believe. Even If Their Names Were Terrifyingly Foreign And Intellectual Sounding, Dostoevsky, Baudelaire Or Cavafy, They Turned Out To Be Charming And Wonderful And Quite Unalarming After All.

-Stephen Fry

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Great Writers, I Discovered,

Stephen Fry

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Great Writers, I Discovered, Were Not To Be Bowed Down Before And Worshipped, But Embraced And Befriended. Their Names Resounded Through History Not Because They Had Massive Brows And Thought Deep Incomprehensible Thoughts, But Because They Opened Windows In The Mind, They Put Their Arms Round You And Showed You Things You Always Knew But Never Dared To Believe. Even If Their Names Were Terrifyingly Foreign And Intellectual Sounding, Dostoevsky, Baudelaire Or Cavafy, They Turned Out To Be Charming And Wonderful And Quite Unalarming After All.

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Families Where There Is Not Much Laughter I Think Are Signs Of Some Sort Of Dysfunctionality Or Sickness.

When Steampunk Meets Adventure And Adventure Meets Comedy And Comedy Meets Ingenuity And Ingenuity Meets Charm And Charm Meets Wonder And Wonder Meets Pleasure The Result Is A Triumph. Dr Grordbort Is The Future. And The Past. Which Makes An Ideal Present.

P. G. Wodehouse... Used, When In Town, To Solve The Problem Of The Long Walk To The Post-office By The Simple Expedient Of Tossing His Letters Out Of His Window: His Belief That The Average Human, Finding A Stamped And Addressed Envelope On The Pavement, Would Naturally Pop It Into The Nearest Pillar-box Was Never Once, In Decades, Shown To Be Unfounded.

Music Takes Me To Places Of Illimitable Sensual And Insensate Joy, Accessing Points Of Ecstasy That No Angelic Lover Could Ever Locate, Or Plunging Me Into Gibbering Weeping Hells Of Pain That No Torturer Could Ever Devise".

There Is No Right Language Or Wrong Language Any More Than There Are Right Or Wrong Clothes.

I Really Do Believe That There Are Those Who Would Like And Trust Me Better If They Saw Me Weeping Into A Whisky, Making A Fool Of Myself, Getting Aggressive, Maudlin And Drunkenly Out Of Control. I Have Never Found Those States In Others Anything Other Than Tiring, Awkward, Embarrassing And Fantastically Dull, But I Am Quite Sure That People Would Cherish A View Of Me In That Condition At Least Once In A While.

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.

I Don't Watch Television, I Think It Destroys The Art Of Talking About Oneself.

Like Vichyssoise, Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold.

Animated Series

A University Is Not, Thank Heavens, A Place For Vocational Instruction, It Has Nothing To Do With Training For A Working Life And Career, It Is A Place For Education, Something Quite Different.

Simon Gray, I Decided When I First Witnessed This Frog Into Prince Transformation, Did Not Have A Drinking Problem. He Had A Drinking Solution.

It Is Possible To Be A Fan Of Reality Tv, Talent Shows And Bubblegum Pop And Still Have A Brain. You Will Also See That A Great Many People Know Perfectly Well How Silly And Camp And Trivial Their Fandom Is. They Do Not Check In Their Minds When They Enter A Fan Site. Judgement Is Not Necessarily Fled To Brutish Beasts, And Men Have Not Quite Lost Their Reason. Which Is All A Way Of Questioning Whether Pop-culture Hero Worship Is Really So Psychically Damaging, So Erosive Of Cognitive Faculties, So Corrupting Of The Soul Of Mankind As We Are So Often Told.

Money Is To Everything As An Aeroplane Is To Australia. The Aeroplane Isn't Australia, But It Remains The Only Practical Way We Know Of Reaching It. So Perhaps, Metonymically, The Aeroplane Is Australia After All.

Self-consciousness, That's What It Is. Always My Abiding Vice. I Keep Seeing Myself. Me Watching Myself Watching Others Watch Me. How Do You Lose That? What's The Trick?

A Month's Salary, Deep Regret, The Telephone Number Of Some Foul Rehab Clinic And My Lance Was Free.

It Is A Little Theory Of Mine That Has Much Exercised My Mind Lately, That Most Of The Problems Of This Silly And Delightful World Derive From Our Apologising For Those Things Which We Ought Not To Apologise For, And Failing To Apologise For Those Things For Which Apology Is Necessary.

...as Absurd And Dishonest As Claiming That The Trouble With Computer Games Is That They Stop People Watching Television.

There Is Simply No Limit To The Tyrannical Snobbery That Otherwise Decent People Can Descend Into When It Comes To Music.

There's No Doubt That I Do Have Extremes Of Mood That Are Greater Than Just About Anybody Else I Know.

Nothing In This World Is At It Seems. Except, Possibly, Porridge.

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)

One Of The Reasons I Love The Online World Is That Although That Exists In Abundance You Can Choose Absolutely Which Part Of The Online World You Want To Live In. You Can Make Your Own Kingdom In That Sense.

The Email Of The Species Is Deadlier Than The Mail.

I Get An Urge, Like A Pregnant Elephant, To Go Away And Give Birth To A Book.

I Have Pushed The Boat Out As Far As I Should In Terms Of Taking On Too Many Things. I'm Getting Older And I Just Could Not Take It Any More. I Am Now Monitoring Myself Very Closely And I'm Just Trying Not To Get Into That Sort Of State Again.

Estate Agents. You Can't Live With Them, You Can't Live With Them. The First Sign Of These Nasty Purulent Sores Appeared Round About 1894. With Their Jangling Keys, Nasty Suits, Revolting Beards, Moustaches And Tinted Spectacles, Estate Agents Roam The Land Causing Perturbation And Despair. If You Try And Kill Them, You're Put In Prison: If You Try And Talk To Them, You Vomit. There's Only One Thing Worse Than An Estate Agent But At Least That Can Be Safely Lanced, Drained And Surgically Dressed. Estate Agents. Love Them Or Loathe Them, You'd Be Mad Not To Loathe Them.

At John Schlesinger's Funeral At A Synagogue In St John's Wood Some Years Ago The Person I Stood Next To Said To Me Encouragingly, 'come On, Stephen - You're Not Singing. Have A Go!' 'believe Me, Paul, You Don't Want Me To,' I Said. Besides, I Was Having A Much Better Time Listening To Him. 'no. Go On!' So I Joined In The Chorus. 'you're Right,' Paul Mccartney Conceded. 'you Can't Sing.

I Was Born Mary Patterson, But Then I Married And Naturally Took My Husband's Name, So Now I'm Neil Patterson.

Money And Fame Are Trashy And Don't Guarantee Happiness, But We All Refuse Really To Know It.

I Knew I Couldn't Believe In God, Because I Was Fundamentally Hellenic In My Outlook.

Mind You, Mount Rushmore Isn't Exactly The Parthenon Or The Sistine Chapel Either. After The Naïve Daftness Of The Crazy Horse Monument, I Find The Pompous Idiocy Of Those Four Presidents Somehow More Risible Still. Wishing To Show Respect Or Feel A Vicarious Thrill Of Admiration And Pride, I Can Only Giggle. For Which I Am Very Sorry. Any Loyal American Reading This Who Feels Outraged And Insulted Is Free To Explode With Derisive Snorts Of Laughter At Any British Equivalent.

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.

The Church Has No Power Over Our Lives Any More, Which Is Something Of A Blessing For Those Who Do Not Enjoy Red-hot Pokers Or Iron Thumb-screws.

Talent Is Inborn, But Technique Is Learned.

I Can Understand The Greek Idea That There Are These These Principles Of Lightening Or Of War Or Of Wisdom And To Embody Them, To Personify Them Into A Athena Or Aries Or Whichever God You Want Makes Enormous Sense.

Humanism Inspires A Lot Of Enthusiasm For Everyday Life And Urges People To Be Better To One Another, To Work Towards A Better Future And A Common Good. If I Believed There Was An Afterlife I Would Have So Much Less Motive For Filling This Life With Every Experience That Is Offered Up To Me.

But Happiness Is No Respecter Of Persons.

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.

I've Always Believed That Everything That Is Said From Authority Is Either The Authority Of One's Own Heart, One's Own Brain, One's Own Reading, One's Own Trust, But Not The Authority Of Someone Who Claims It Because They're Speaking For God And They Know The Truth Because It's Written In A Book. That, Essentially, Is Where I Come From. In A Sense, Tolerance Is My Religion. Reason Is My Religion.

But If One Could Go Back In Time, I'd Love To Have Been Directed By Howard Hawks, Who's One Of My Great Heroes. One Of The Greatest Directors There Ever Was. He Directed Probably One Of The Greatest Westerns Of All Time In 'rio Bravo'.

You Think I Have More Than Most People Dream Of? What Other People Dream Of Doesn't Matter. I Always Had Less Than I Ever Dreamt Of. All I Ever Dreamt Of Was Family. A Father And A Mother. Most People Don't Even Need To Dream Of Such Luxuries, They Take Them For Granted. That Is What I Used To Dwell On, Alone In My Bedroom. I Dwelt As All Children Do, On The Injustice. Injustice Is The Most Terrible Thing In The World, Oliver. Everything That Is Evil Springs From It And Only A Cheap Soul Can Abide It Without Anger.

We Don't Stop Talking About How The World Might Be Better Just Because We Have No Chance Of Making It To Prime Minister. We Are All Politicians. We Are All Artists. In An Open Society Everything The Mind And Hands Can Achieve Is Our Birthright. It Is Up To Us To Claim It.

I've Always Had Great Respect For Paddington Because He Is Amusingly English And Eccentric. He Is A Great British Institution And My Generation Grew Up With The Books And Then Michael Horden's Animations.

You Can Never Hope To Recapture The First Fine Careless Rapture As The Poet Put It, But It Stays With You Like A Good Acid Trip.

Life, That Can Shower You With So Much Splendour, Is Unremittingly Cruel To Those Who Have Given Up.

We Are Not Nouns, We Are Verbs. I Am Not A Thing - An Actor, A Writer - I Am A Person Who Does Things - I Write, I Act - And I Never Know What I'm Going To Do Next. I Think You Can Be Imprisoned If You Think Of Yourself As A Noun.

Alternative Medicine People Call Themselves "holistic" And Say It's The "whole" Approach. Well, If It's The Whole Approach, Let It Be The Mind As Well. Use Logic, Use Sense, Use The Incredible Five Wits You Were Given By Creation.

I Think Faith In Each Other Is Much Harder Than Faith In God...

I Have To Mime At Parties When Everyone Sings Happy Birthday... Mime Or Mumble And Rumble And Growl And Grunt So Deep That Only Moles, Manta Rays And Mushrooms Can Hear Me.

The Service Took Place On One Of Those Afternoons That Occur Only In The Past.

I Think I'm Most Nervous About Revealing How Nervous I Have Always Been. People Think Me Calm, Confident, Poised. Inside I'm A Jelly.

The Gay News Critic Wrote That I 'carried The Lilt Of The Irish Without The Brogue'.

Not One Word Of The Following Is True

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.

I Suppose That There Is No Point Wasting Time Being Lazy, Though Of Course Indolence In A Divine Way, Actually Has Its Advantages.

There Is So Much We Can Learn From Tv. It's A Window On The World.

Great And Good Men And Women Stirred Sugar Into Their Coffee Knowing That It Had Been Picked By Slaves. Kind, Good Ancestors Of All Of Us Never Questioned Hangings, Burnings, Tortures, Inequality, Suffering And Injustice That Today Revolt Us. If We Dare To Presume To Damn Them With Our Fleeting Ideas Of Morality, Then We Risk Damnation From Our Descendants For Whatever It Is That We Are Doing That Future History Will Judge As Intolerable And Wicked: Eating Meat, Driving Cars, Appearing On Tv, Visiting Zoos, Who Knows?

Personally, I'd Never Seen A Graphic Novel. I Knew They Existed Because Friends Of Mine Like Jonathan Ross Collect Them And Some Very Literate And Intelligent People Really Rate The Graphic Novel As A Form.

You Don't Need A Harvard Mba To Know That The Bedroom And The Boardroom Are Just Two Sides Of The Same Ballgame.

And Then I Saw Him And Nothing Was Ever The Same Again. The Sky Was Never The Same Colour, The Moon Never The Same Shape: The Air Never Smelt The Same, Food Never Tasted The Same. Every Word I Knew Changed Its Meaning, Everything That Once Was Stable And Firm Became As Insubstantial As A Puff Of Wind, And Every Puff Of Wind Became A Solid Thing I Could Feel And Touch.

A Book Is Judged, Not By Its Reference To Life, But By Its Reference To Other Books.

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.

If I Had A Large Amount Of Money I Should Certainly Found A Hospital For Those Whose Grip Upon The World Is So Tenuous That They Can Be Severely Offended By Words And Phrases And Yet Remain All Unoffended By The Injustice, Violence And Oppression That Howls Daily About Our Ears.

As Humourless A Lump Of Dough As Ever Held A Torchlight Vigil Outside The South African Embassy Or Stuck An Aids Awareness Ribbon On An Unwilling First-nighter.

The English Language Is Like London: Proudly Barbaric Yet Deeply Civilised, Too, Common Yet Royal, Vulgar Yet Processional, Sacred Yet Profane.

Philosophy Is An Odd Thing. When We Use The Word In Everyday Speech, You Know, You Sometimes Hear It Hilariously.

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.

You Can't Reason Yourself Back Into Cheerfulness Any More Than You Can Reason Yourself Into An Extra Six Inches In Height.

Seriousness Is No More A Guarantee Of Truth, Insight, Authenticity Or Probity, Than Humour Is A Guarantee Of Superficiality And Stupidity.

I Have Van Gogh's Ear For Music

Oh, It Takes A Lot For Me To Walk Out Of A Film.

I May Have Looked Happy But Inside I Was Hopelessly Depressed.

You Either Get Norfolk, With Its Wild Roughness And Uncultivated Oddities, Or You Don't. It's Not All Soft And Lovely. It Doesn't Ask To Be Loved.

My Parents Were Marvelously Educated People.

You Can Act In Five, Six, Or Seven Films In The Time It Takes To Direct One Film.

Nowadays A Lot Of What Was Wrong With Me Would No Doubt Be Ascribed To Attention Deficit Disorder, Tartrazine Food Colouring, Dairy Produce And Air Pollution. A Few Hundred Years Earlier It Would Have Been Demons, Still The Best Analogy I Think, But Not Much Help When It Comes To A Cure.

Wisdom Is Probably The Ability To Cope. That's Why Someone Who Has To Walk Seven Miles Every Day To Get Water For Their Children Can Be Wiser Than Someone Sitting Behind A Desk In Wall Street.

As Someone Who Worked Hard For A Labour Victory In The 90s, Do I Regret It? Not Really. It Was Bound To Happen. And It'll Happen With The Next Government, And The One After It. Because All Governments Serve Us. They Serve The Filth.

One Of The Traps Of Adolescence Is The Sort Of Paranoid Resentment That Somehow You're Never Going To Match Up And That Everybody Else's Life Is Going To Be Better And Finer And Fuller. That Everyone Else Attended Some Secret Lesson In Which How To Live Was Taught And You Had A Dental Appointment That Day, Or You Were Somehow Not Invited. And The Point Of Great Writers Like Wilde Is That They Make That Invitation To You.

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.

There Is No Reason Why Anyone Should Understand How It Works… And Of Course No Reason Why Anyone Should Care … Unless You Are Curious, In Which Case I Love You, For Curiosity About The World And All Its Corners Is A Beautiful Thing.

I Suppose The Thing That Really Interests Me Is What Mankind Did With The Big, Big, Big Discoveries That Have Created Our Modern Age.

I Never Quite Got The Hang Of The Getting Drunk & Fondling The Thighs [of All The Cumbersome Young Males] Business... Whether That Makes Me A Gallant & Proper Gentleman, A Cowardly Wuss Or An Unadventurous Prude, I Cannot Make Out

Taste Every Fruit Of Every Tree In The Garden At Least Once. It Is An Insult To Creation Not To Experience It Fully. Temperance Is Wickedness.

Compromise Is A Stalling Between Two Fools.

The Stranger Might Laugh And Seem To Enjoy The Writing, But You Hug To Yourself The Thought That They Didn't Quite Understand Its Force And Quality The Way You Do - Just As Your Friends (thank Heavens) Don't Also Fall In Love With The Person You Are Going On And On About To Them.

Falling In Love

Great Writers, I Discovered, Were Not To Be Bowed Down Before And Worshipped, But Embraced And Befriended. Their Names Resounded Through History Not Because They Had Massive Brows And Thought Deep Incomprehensible Thoughts, But Because They Opened Windows In The Mind, They Put Their Arms Round You And Showed You Things You Always Knew But Never Dared To Believe. Even If Their Names Were Terrifyingly Foreign And Intellectual Sounding, Dostoevsky, Baudelaire Or Cavafy, They Turned Out To Be Charming And Wonderful And Quite Unalarming After All.

The Concept That Really Gets The Goat Of The Gay-hater, The Idea That Really Spins Their Melon And Sickens Their Stomachs Is That Most Terrible And Terrifying Of All Human Notions, Love. That One Can Love Another Of The Same Gender, That Is What The Homophobe Really Cannot Stand. Love In All Eight Tones And All Five Semitones Of The World's Full Octave. Love As Agape, Eros And Philos; Love As Infatuation, Obsession And Lust; Love As Torture, Euphoria, Ecstasy And Oblivion (this Is Beginning To Read Like A Calvin Klein Perfume Catalogue); Love As Need, Passion And Desire.

One Of The Most Intensely Unlikeable Figures Of The Twentieth Century, Fanatical Anti-semite, Enemy Of Labour Unions And Proud Recipient Of Medals From Nazi Germany, Where Hitler Held Him In Veneration, Henry Ford Was Also An Employer Who Paid His Workers More Than His Competitors, An Innovator Who Pioneered The Assembly Line And A Visionary Whose Part In The Creation Of The Twentieth Century Was So Great That Aldous Huxley, In His Brave New World, Prefigured A Society Whose Calendar Was Divided Into Bf And Af-before Ford And After Ford.

Brave New World

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.

What Makes A Good Family? Well, I Suppose Obviously Love. Love Lubricated Often I Think By Humor. I Think A Family That Can Laugh At Each Other And Tease Themselves And Who Are Able To Be Jolly With Each Other I Think Is The Key.

Literary Studies Were No More Than A Series Of Autopsies Performed By Heartless Technicians. Worse Than Autopsies: Biopsies. Vivisection. Even Movies, Which I Love More Than Anything, More Than Life Itself, They Even Do It With Movies These Days.

It Is Exhausting Knowing That Most Of The Time The Phone Rings, Most Of The Time There's An Email, Most Of The Time There's A Letter, Someone Wants Something Of You.

...the Reality Of Intelligent British Speech... Uses Blasphemus, Coital And Cloacal Expletives As A Matter Of Course.

I've Always Been Aware Of My Sexuality, But I Never Quite Knew What It Meant.

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.

Old Professors Never Die, They Just Lose Their Faculties.

Cheat? Good Heavens, This Is An Amateur Cricket Match Amongst Leading Prep Schools, I'm An Englishman And A Schoolmaster Supposedly Setting An Example To His Young Charges. We Are Playing The Most Artistic And Beautiful Game Ever Devised. Of Course I'll Cunting Well Cheat. Now, Give Me My Robe And Put On My Crown. I Have Immortal Longings In Me.

I Almost Once Wanted To Publish A Self Help Book Saying, 'how To Be Happy, By Stephen Fry: Guaranteed Success'. And People Buy This Huge Book And It's All Blank Pages, And The First Page Would Just Say, 'stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself--and You Will Be Happy.'

Glory Never Arrives Through The Front Door. She Sneaks In Uninvited Round The Back Or Through An Upstairs Window While You Are Sleeping.

Humanism Is An Approach To Life Which Encourages Ethical And Fulfilling Living On The Basis Of Reason And Humanity, And Rejects Superstition And Religion. The Most Immediate Impact Of Living As A Humanist Is That We Believe This Life Is All There Is - So What We Do And The Choices We Make Really Count.

Christmas To A Child Is The First Terrible Proof That To Travel Hopefully Is Better Than To Arrive.

You Should Give Up.' 'why?' 'for One Thing, You'll Live Longer.' 'oh, You Don't Live Longer. It Just Seems Longer.

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.

A Cut Glass English Accent Can Fool Unsuspecting Americans Into Detecting A Brilliance That Isn't There

Supporting The English Cricket Team Is Like Supporting A Second Division Football Team. I Support Norwich City Football Team And When They Lose I Really Don't Mind Because I Expect Them To; But When We Win I'm So Happy - Much Happier Than Any Arsenal Supporter Could Ever Be.

Generally, We Admire The Thing We Are Not.

To Me, Reason Is As Spiritual As Anything Else, The Beauty Of Reason Seems To Me Indelible And Ineffable And Numinous... The Spirit Is After All The Same Word We Use To Describe... Essence

How Dare You? How Dare You Create A World In Which There Is Such Misery That Is Not Our Fault? It's Not Right, It's Utterly, Utterly Evil. Why Should I Respect A Capricious, Mean-minded, Stupid God Who Creates A World That Is So Full Of Injustice And Pain?

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.

[...] I Suppose This Was The First Time I Had Ever Felt An Urge Not To Be. Never An Urge To Die, Far Less An Urge To Put An End To Myself - Simply An Urge Not To Be. This Disgusting, Hostile And Unlovely World Was Not Made For Me, Nor I For It. It Was Alien To Me And I To It.

I Do Believe That Almost Everything I Do Is Based On My Feelings, Not On My Intellect. Though But We Won't Chase Ourselves Up The Particular Sentiment, Or We'll Get Lost.

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.

An Original Idea. That Can't Be Too Hard. The Library Must Be Full Of Them.

Between Funny And Witty Falls The Shadow

If We Empower Ourselves With Responsibility Over Our Actions, Responsibility Over Our Destinies And Responsibility For Directing And Maintaining And Creating Our Own Ethical And Moral Frameworks, Which Is The Most Important Thing Really Isn’t It Because Perhaps The Greatest Insult To Humanism Is This Idea That Mankind Needs A God In Order To Have A Moral Framework.

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.

Hold The Newsreader's Nose Squarely, Waiter, Or Friendly Milk Will Countermand My Trousers.

Hell, I Am Young. I Am Free. My Teeth Are Clean. The Sun Shines. To Hell With Everything Else

Everything Had Been Based On A Kind Of Certainty, A Sense Of Man At The Center Of Things, A Sense Of Order And Hierarchy. And Suddenly, Almost Simultaneously, Extraordinary Discoveries Are Made.

No Adolescent Ever Wants To Be Understood, Which Is Why They Complain About Being Misunderstood All The Time.

As If A Device Can Function If It Has No Style. As If A Device Can Be Called Stylish That Does Not Function Superbly... Yes, Beauty Matters. Boy, Does It Matter. It Is Not Surface, It Is Not An Extra, It Is The Thing Itself.

In A Dung Heap, Even A Plastic Bead Can Gleam Like A Sapphire.

I Like To Think Of Myself At Home In The Armchair, Writing, Smoking And Occasionally Wandering Down The Shop.

If You Have Been, I'm Glad You've Stopped.

Weather Is Real. It Is Absolutely Real: When It Rains, It Rains – You Get Wet, There Is No Question About It. It Is Also True About Weather That You Can’t Control It; You Can’t Say If I Wish Hard Enough It Won’t Rain. It Is Equally True That If The Weather Is Bad One Day It Will Get Better And What I Had To Learn Was To Treat My Moods Like The Weather.

As I Go Clowning My Sentimental Way Into Eternity, Wrestling With All My Problems Of Estrangement And Communion, Sincerity And Simulation, Ambition And Acquiescence, I Shuttle Between Worrying Whether I Matter At All And Whether Anything Else Matters But Me.

My Father Was All Brain And Little Heart.

I'm Afraid I Was Very Much The Traditionalist. I Went Down On One Knee And Dictated A Proposal Which My Secretary Faxed Over Straight Away.

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'.

Self Pity Is The Worst Possible Emotion Anyone Can Have. And The Most Destructive. It Is, To Slightly Paraphrase What Wilde Said About Hatred, And I Think Actually Hatred's A Subset Of Self Pity And Not The Other Way Around - 'it Destroys Everything Around It, Except Itself.'

That One Can Love Another Of The Same Gender, That Is What The Homophobe Really Cannot Stand.

If You Go Looking For Loonies And Religious Fanatics And Dropouts And Freaks, I Dare Say You'll Find It.

Well, Isn't It Splendid & Rather Toffee?

You Don't Get Depressed Because Bad Things Happen To You. That's Getting Pissed Off And Annoyed. That's Reasonable. Someone Hits You In The Face You Go Ow, You Know That's... But Depression Is Something That Happens Like Weather To You Inside You.

Entry Is Not Equivalent To Possession.

I Suppose The Thing I Most Would Have Liked To Have Known Or Been Reassured About Is That In The World, What Counts More Than Talent, What Counts More Than Energy Or Concentration Or Commitment, Or Anything Else - Is Kindness. And The More In The World That You Encounter Kindness And Cheerfulness - Which Is Its Kind Of Amiable Uncle Or Aunt - The Better The World Always Is. And All The Big Words: Virtue, Justice, Truth - Are Dwarfed By The Greatness Of Kindness.

We Hold On Steve's Still Smiling Face As Michael Passes By. Steve's Eyes Follow Michael Out Of The Room And Then The Smile Disappears. It Is Replaced By A Look Of Hunger And Desolation.

As Children Everyone Thinks Their Family Is Weird And They're Upset By The Weirdness Of Their Own Family.

You'll Often Hear The Phrase "science Doesn't Know Everything." Well, Of Course It Doesn't Know Everything. But Just Because Science Doesn't Know Everything Doesn't Mean That It Knows Nothing.

It's As If Scientists Exert Every Effort Of Will They Possess Deliberately To Find The Least Significant Problems In The World And Explain Them. Art Matters. Happiness Matters. Love Matters. Good Matters. Evil Matters. Slam The Fridge Door. They Are The Only Things That Matter And They Are Of Course Precisely The Things That Science Goes Out Of Its Way To Ignore.

What Other Developed Democracy Has Such A Ridiculous And Squalid History Of Intolerance? From The Imprisonment And Roasting Of Heretics, Witches And Poachers, To The Censorship Of Literature, Art And Television: From St Alban Through Wilde, Joyce And Lawrence I Think We Can Point With Pride To As Grim A Catalogue Of Intemperate, Bigoted Repression As Any Nation On Earth.

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

Language Development

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.

I Believe In Kindness And Niceness And Lots Of Spiritual Things, But The Real Intellectual Rigor And Quest Of Logic Is Something That I'm Afraid Takes Incredibly Hard Work And We Live In An Age In Which Hard Work Is If Not Actively Deprecated Or Denigrated It Is Run Away From Or Ignored.

I'm Absolute Attacking My Own Instinct For Politeness, But I Think I Admire Artists Who Just Speak Out Or Who Are Strong, So It's Very Hard.

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.

There Is Not Any Way That You Can Just Choose The Nice Bits And Say That Means There Is A God And Ignore The True Fact Of What Nature Is.

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.

It Is Astonishing How Articulate One Can Become When Alone And Raving At A Radio. Arguments And Counter Arguments, Rhetoric And Bombast Flow From One's Lips Like Scurf From The Hair Of A Bank Manager.

I Flicked My Eyes Over To Steve Again And Saw Him Straighten. He Would Need A Diversion Just To Start. “explanations?” I Bellowed. “explanations? There’s Your Explanation…there!” I Stabbed A Finger Dramatically Towards The Far Corner Of The Room. Pathetic, Really. I Mean, Talk About The Oldest Trick In The Book. But It’s A Good Book, And The Trick Would Have Been Cut From Subsequent Editions If It Didn’t Sometimes Work.

Somehow, As A Writer, You Tend To Use Words To Paper Over Structural Cracks.

I Think We Have All Experienced Passion That Is Not In Any Sense Reasonable.

Sometimes There Just Isn't Enough Vomit In The World.

I Am A Lover Of Truth, A Worshipper Of Freedom, A Celebrant At The Altar Of Language And Purity And Tolerance.

I Think People Talk About One Love, But There Is The Need To Love And The Need To Be Loved Are Not The Same Thing And I Suppose That's... And It's Working That Out Is Part Of Growing Up.

I Feel I Would Love To Close Down For A Number Of Years In Some Way And Just Be In The Country Making Pork Pies And Chutneys And Never Have To Poke My Head Out Of The Parapet.

If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People In The World?

My General View Is That Best Actor Best Suited To Role Should Get The Job. Obviously When It Comes To Colour And Issues Of Ethnicity The Choice Is Clear. But I Do Not Believe You Have To Be Transgender Or Have Undergone Sex Reassignment Surgery To Be Able Play A Character Who Has.acting Is Acting After All.

How To Seperate The Humiliation From The Loss, That's The Catch. You Can Never Be Sure If What Tortures You Is The Pain Of Being Without Someone You Love Or The Embarrassment Of Admitting That You Have Been Rejected.

All The Big Words -virtue, Justice, Truth, ...- Are Dwarfed By The Greatness Of Kindness

Money No Longer Has Any Meaning. Civilization Is Coming To An End. If Not The Destruction Of The World, It's An Endless Stalemate.

The Most Natural Way You Would Attempt To Cope With Something Inside You That Is Affecting Your Moods And Your Energy Levels Is To Intervene With Chemicals To Help And Because Medical Science Hasn't Come Up With Pharmaceuticals That Do Particularly Well You Tend To Reach For The Chemicals That Are Outside The Pharma Counter, I.e. Narcotics And Alcohol Because They Can Guarantee Your Mood More Or Less.

I Found It All About As Arousing As A Tupperware Party.

There Are Some Things I Don't Like, About Which I Think, Well, That's Me. But Coriander Is A Giant Hoax Perpetrated By A Perverted Society.

There's Nothing Worse Than The British In One Of Their Fits Of Morality.

It Is A Cliche That Most Cliches Are True, But Then Like Most Cliches, That Cliche Is Untrue.

It's A Great Privilege Just To Be In A Film Not Because You're Some Packaging That Some Agent Has Done With The Studio Exec: "we Need A John Travolta Film."

The People I Know Who Swear The Most Tend To Have The Widest Vocabularies.

I Do Think It's Important Not To Be Absolutely Sure, So Sure That You Can't Reinvent Yourself In Some Way, Or At Least Rediscover The Truth Of Why You Think What You Think, And Not Just Take It As An Assumption.

Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself And You Will Be Happy.

It Is The Useless Things That Make Life Worth Living And That Make Life Dangerous Too: Wine, Love, Art, Beauty. Without Them Life Is Safe, But Not Worth Bothering With.

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.

Part Of Life Is Learning What To Be Ashamed Of And What To Be Proud Of.

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.

All We Have To Do Is Listen. The Good Lord Gave Us Two Ears And Only One Mouth, My Dear White-headed Mother Used To Say.

Estate Agents: Like Them Or Loathe Them, You'd Be Mad Not To Loathe Them.

It Was As If He Grew His Hair Long And Smoked Cigarettes Because He Liked To, Not Because He Liked Being Seen To. This Was Dangerously Subversive.

When You've Seen A Nude Infant Doing A Backward Somersault You Know Why Clothing Exists.

I Am Aware Of The Technical Distinction Between ‘less’ And ‘fewer’, And Between ‘uninterested’ And ‘disinterested’ And ‘infer’ And ‘imply’, But None Of These Are Of Importance To Me. ‘none Of These Are Of Importance,’ I Wrote There, You’ll Notice – The Old Pedantic Me Would Have Insisted On “none Of Them Is Of Importance”. Well I’m Glad To Say I’ve Outgrown That Silly Approach To Language

When Push-off Comes To Shove-off, A Man Must Have A Reason To Get Out Of Bed In The Mornings, Something More Than The Threat Of Bedsores, At Any Rate.

Things Are Always Worse In The Steady Watches Of The Night.

We Humans Are Naturally Disposed To Worship Gods And Heroes, To Build Our Pantheons And Valhallas. I Would Rather See That Impulse Directed Into The Adoration Of Daft Singers, Thicko Footballers And Air-headed Screen Actors Than Into The Veneration Of Dogmatic Zealots, Fanatical Preachers, Militant Politicians And Rabid Cultural Commentators.

The Greeks Understood Perfectly That If There Were Divine Beings They Are Capricious, Unkind, Malicious Mostly, Temperamental, Envious And Mostly Deeply Unpleasant Because That You Can Say Well Yes, All Right, If There Is Going To Be God Or Gods Then You Have To Admit That They're Very At The Very Least Capricious. They're Certainly Not Consistent. They're Certainly Not All Loving.

Living With Bipolar, Schizophrenia Or Any Other Mental Condition Takes A Recognition That One Has A Chronic Condition That Needs Managing. The Management Can Be Through Pharmaceutical Intervention, Talk Therapy, Mindfulness Programmes, Diet And Exercise Changes, All Kinds Of Things.

I'm A Bit Of A Coward, And Lazy, Oddly Enough.

How Can One Not Be Fond Of Something That The Daily Mail Despises?

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.

Coming Out As Gay Was An Easy Enough Matter For Me, Since I Worked In A Profession Where Being Gay Had A Long History Of Being Accepted.

Mankind Can Live Free In A Society Hemmed In By Laws, But We Have Yet To Find A Historical Example Of Mankind Living Free In Lawless Anarchy.

It's Now Very Common To Hear People Say 'i'm Rather Offended By That'.

Freedom Of Speech

You Are Who You Are When Nobody's Watching.

One Of The Nice Things About Looking At A Bear Is That You Know It Spends 100 Per Cent Of Every Minute Of Every Day Being A Bear. It Doesn't Strive To Become A Better Bear. It Doesn't Go To Sleep Thinking, "i Wasn't Really A Very Good Bear Today". 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

I've Never Had Any Illusions About Being A Lead Actor In Films, Because Lead Actors Have To Be Of A Certain Kind.

And Of Course You Are Mad, If By A Madman We Mean A Mind That Questions And Rejects Every Civilized Norm.

I Like To Wake Up Each Morning And Not Know What I Think, That I May Reinvent Myself In Some Way.

Moving From Chair To Chair, From Coffee Machine To Coffee Machine Is The Limit Of My Action In Most Films. But I Enjoy Being Cast In Them Because I Love Watching Them.

Atheism Is Not Just About Not Believing There Is A God, But On The Assumption That There Is One, What Kind Of God Is He?

All The Cold-reading Clairvoyants And The Nonsensical Astrologers And Absurd Esp Merchants And Other Such People Who Talk About Vibrations And Energies.... God, If There's A Word That Drives Me Mad It's "energy" Used In A Nonsensical Way-don't Get Me Started!

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