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If You Are Hungry For Food, You Are Prepared To Hunt High And Low For It. If You Are Hungry For Information It Is The Same. Information Is All Around Us, Now More Than Ever Before In Human History. You Barely Have To Stir Or Incommode Yourself To Find Things Out. The Only Reason People Do Not Know Much Is Because They Do Not Care To Know. They Are Incurious. Incuriosity Is The Oddest And Most Foolish Failing There Is.

-Stephen Fry

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If You Are Hungry

Stephen Fry

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If You Are Hungry For Food, You Are Prepared To Hunt High And Low For It. If You Are Hungry For Information It Is The Same. Information Is All Around Us, Now More Than Ever Before In Human History. You Barely Have To Stir Or Incommode Yourself To Find Things Out. The Only Reason People Do Not Know Much Is Because They Do Not Care To Know. They Are Incurious. Incuriosity Is The Oddest And Most Foolish Failing There Is.

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My First Meeting With You Only Confirmed What I First Suspected. You Are A Fraud, A Charlatan And A Shyster. My Favourite Kind Of Person, In Fact.

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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.

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Choking With Dry Tears And Raging, Raging, Raging At The Absolute Indifference Of Nature And The World To The Death Of Love, The Death Of Hope And The Death Of Beauty, I Remember Sitting On The End Of My Bed, Collecting These Pills And Capsules Together And Wondering Why, Why When I Felt I Had So Much To Offer, So Much Love, Such Outpourings Of Love And Energy To Spend On The World, I Was Incapable Of Being Offered Love, Giving It Or Summoning The Energy With Which I Knew I Could Transform Myself And Everything Around Me.

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

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

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.

Norwich Is A Fine City. None Finer. If There Is Another City In The United Kingdom With A School Of Painters Named After It, A Matchless Modern Art Gallery, A University With A Reputation For Literary Excellence Which Can Boast Booker Prize-winning Alumni, One Of The Grandest Romanesque Cathedrals In The World, And An Extraordinary New State-of-the-art Library Then I Have Yet To Hear Of It.

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.

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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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Compromise Is A Stalling Between Two Fools.

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

I Now Accept That It Is Looking Increasingly Likely That Tiger Woods Is, In Fact, Straight.

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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.

[...] 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.

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.

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.

Atheism Comes Into Rather A Bad Press And I Suppose I'd Rather Describe Myself As A Humanist... I Don't Believe In God. I Don't Believe There Is A God.

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.

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.

No, I Love The Idea That Someone Changes. As An Actor It's Always The Thing That You Look For. He Is Someone Who Starts Off Bright, Cheerful And Confident And Then Has Everything Taken Away From Him. It's A Wonderful Journey To Take.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

There Is Something In The American Project, Something In Simple American Oratory, Something In The Hope And Idealism Of This Frustrating And Contradictory Nation That Still Makes My Spirits Soar And My Heart Leap With Optimism And Belief. If Only They Understood How To Make A Cup Of Tea.

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.

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

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

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.

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'.

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.

Literature Is The Only Access To Truth We Have On This Planet.

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.

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.

We Gave You A Perfectly Good Language And You F***ed Up.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

Cynical Is The Name We Give Those We Fear May Be Laughing At Us.

Not One Word Of The Following Is True

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

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

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.

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.

I Think My View Is That Whenever You Project Into The Future You're Never Likely To Be Accurate In The Details, Or The Paraphernalia And Style. It's In The Spirit Of It.

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.

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

I Have Van Gogh's Ear For Music

I Shall Sustain A Massive Erection, That’s What, And I Shan’t Be Answerable For The Consequences. Some Kind Of Ejaculation Is Almost Bound To Ensue And If Either Of You Were To Become Pregnant I Should Never Forgive Myself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.'

Entry Is Not Equivalent To Possession.

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.'

Come Back, And Do That Thing, Be Lovely To Each-other.

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

People Who Can Change And Change Again Are So Much More Reliable And Happier Than Those Who Can’t

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

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.

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

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.

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

I Have Always Been An Impassioned Advocate For The Works Of Shakespeare. I Regard Him As One Of The Most Complete Miracles Of His Or Any Other Age.

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

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.

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

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

The Other Man's Arse Is Always Cleaner!

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.

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

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.

Hey-ho, It's Raining Inside: It Isn't My Fault And There's Nothing I Can Do About It, But Sit It Out. But The Sun May Well Come Out Tomorrow And When It Does, I Shall Take Full Advantage.

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.

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

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

If You Are Hungry For Food, You Are Prepared To Hunt High And Low For It. If You Are Hungry For Information It Is The Same. Information Is All Around Us, Now More Than Ever Before In Human History. You Barely Have To Stir Or Incommode Yourself To Find Things Out. The Only Reason People Do Not Know Much Is Because They Do Not Care To Know. They Are Incurious. Incuriosity Is The Oddest And Most Foolish Failing There Is.

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

The Email Of The Species Is Deadlier Than The Mail.

It May Be That There Is An Afterlife And I'll Look Incredibly Stupid, But At Least I Will Have Had A Crammed Pre Afterlife, A Crammed Life, So To Me The Most Important Thing Is You Know As Kipling Put It. [...] To Fill Every Unforgiving Minute With 60 Seconds Worth Of Distance Run.

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

This Is The Point. One Technology Doesn't Replace Another, It Complements. Books Are No More Threatened By Kindle Than Stairs By Elevators.

Nature Admits No Hierarchy Of Beauty Or Usefulness Or Importance.

I Must Brave The Interior Of The Most Tawdry And Literally Trumpery Tower Of Them All ... The Trump Taj Mahal. For Taking The Name Of The Priceless Mausoleum Of Agra, One Of The Beauties And Wonders Of The World, For That Alone Donald Trump Should Be Stripped Naked And Whipped With Scorpions Along The Boardwalk.- It Is As If A Giant Toad Has Raped A Butterfly.

Generally, We Admire The Thing We Are Not.

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

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