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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.

-Stephen Fry

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When You Get Just

Stephen Fry

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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.

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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.

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 Was Behaviour That I Thought Not Far From Racism, Sexism Or Any Other Kind Of Prejudice Or Snobbery. 'because You Are Not Cute, I Do Not Want To Know You' Was, To Me, Hardly Different From Suggesting 'because You Are Gay, I Dislike You

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Naturally I've Known Girlies Form An Attachment To The Younger Male Before Now, But In The Tennis Score Of The Bedroom Most Girls In My Experience Would Rather Love Thirty Or Love Forty Than Love Fifteen. Men, Of Course, Are A Whole Other Issue; They Start At Love All And Stay There Until They're Dragged From The Court

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

My Father Was All Brain And Little Heart.

If A Thing Can Be Said In Ten Words, I May Be Relied Upon To Take A Hundred To Say It. I Ought To Apologize For That. I Ought To Prune, Pare And Extirpate Excess Growth, But I Will Not. I Like Words—strike That, I Love Words—and While I Am Fond Of The Condensed And Economical Use Of Them In Poetry, In Song Lyrics, In Twitter, In Good Journalism And Smart Advertising, I Love The Luxuriant Profusion And Mad Scatter Of Them Too.

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

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

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.

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.

If You Know Someone Who’s Depressed, Please Resolve Never To Ask Them Why. Depression Isn’t A Straightforward Response To A Bad Situation; Depression Just Is, Like The Weather. Try To Understand The Blackness, Lethargy, Hopelessness, And Loneliness They’re Going Through. Be There For Them When They Come Through The Other Side. It’s Hard To Be A Friend To Someone Who’s Depressed, But It Is One Of The Kindest, Noblest, And Best Things You Will Ever Do.

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

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

It's Certainly Easy To Mock Some Things ... Oddly Enough Though I've Never Found It Easy To Mock Anything Of Value. Only Things That Are Tawdry And Fatuous - Perhaps It's Just Me.

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

It's Rather Splendid To Think Of All Those Great Men And Women Who Appear To Have Presented Symptoms That Allow Us To Describe Them As Bipolar. Whether It's Hemingway, Van Gogh... Robert Schumann Has Been Mentioned... Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath... Some Of Them With Rather Grim Ends.

First Love Is Unrequited Ultimately Because It’s So Huge.it’s Such An Act Of Giving And It Requires So Much Back That It Can Never Be Given Back. It’s Like An Atom Bomb. It’s Like… It’s All The Energy Of Who You Are And Who You Want To Be And What You Love And What You Hope To Be Explodes. It Is Impossible For A Single... Human Being To Offer That Back To You In A Mutual Way.

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?

Just As It Is The Love Of Money That Is The Root Of All Evil, It Is The Belief In Shamefulness That Is The Root Of All Misery.

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.

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

My Parents Were Marvelously Educated People.

But An Adrian Also Knew That An Adrian's Lies Were Real: They Were Lived And Felt And Acted Out As Thoroughly As Another Man's Truths - If Other Men Had Truths - And He Believed It Possible That This Last Lie Might See Him Through To The Grave.

Old Professors Never Die, They Just Lose Their Faculties.

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.

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'm Fat Because I'm Greedy, And If My Mind Is Fat It's Because I'm Curious.

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

I Have Van Gogh's Ear For Music

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.

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.

The Performance Of Buggery Is No More Inevitable A Part Of Homosexuality Than An Orange Syllabub Is An Inevitable Part Of A Dinner: Some May Clamour For It And Instantly Demand A Second Helping, Some Are Not Interested, Some Decide They Will Try It Once And Then Instantly Vomit.

My Life, At Least, Is Divided Between Writing And Performing And Mixtures Of The Two.

I Certainly Don't Want To Be Formulaic. I Want To Be Honest And Authentic And Everything Else.

I Went To Cambridge And Thought I Would Stay There. I Thought I Would Quietly Grow Tweed In A Corner Somewhere And Become A Don Or Something.

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

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

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.

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.

If There Is A Sort Of National American Emotion I Would Call It Optimism. If There Is An English One I Would Call It Embarrassment - Not Even Pessimism - Just Sheer Shame, Embarrassment And Confusion.

[...] 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.

The Other Man's Arse Is Always Cleaner!

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

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.

Compromise Is A Stalling Between Two Fools.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If There Were A God He Would Want Us To Be Better Spirited Than To Take His Word For Everything.

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.

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

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

You've Just Had The Most Imponderable Joy Of Watching Charlieissocoollike, Which Makes You, Like, Cool.

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.

If I Were To Believe In A God L Would Believe In Gods. I Think Monotheism Is The Really Ghastly Thing. That Is The Absolutely Staggering To Me Misapprehension.

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 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.

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.

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.

The Only Reason People Do Not Know Much Is Because They Do Not Care To Know. They Are Incurious. Incuriousity Is The Oddest And Most Foolish Failing There Is.

You Can't Just Say There Is A God Because The World Is Beautiful. You Have To Account For Bone Cancer In Children

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Sex Without Smiling Is As Sickly And As Base As Vodka And Tonic Without Ice.

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.

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."

I Believe That Poetry Is A Primal Impulse Within Us All.

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.

It Is Easy To Forget That The Most Important Aspect Of Comedy, After All, Its Great Saving Grace, Is Its Ambiguity. You Can Simultaneously Laugh At A Situation, And Take It Seriously.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

If You Know Someone Who's Depressed, Please Resolve Never To Ask Them Why. Depression Isn't A Straightforward Response To A Bad Situation; Depression Just Is, Like The Weather.

Being Depressed

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I've Never Had Any Illusions About Being A Lead Actor In Films, Because Lead Actors Have To Be Of A Certain Kind. Apart From The Beauty Of Looks And Figure, Which I Cannot Claim To Have, There's Just A Particular Kind Of Ordinary-joe Quality That A Film Star Needs To Have.

Well, Isn't It Splendid & Rather Toffee?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Perhaps The Greatest Definition I Think Of Character And Quality Is People Who When They're Truly Great Rather Than Making You Feel That Tall They Make You Feel That Tall, That They're Greatness As It Were Improves You.

There Can't Be That Many Individual Souls. Not Souls Like Mine. There Isn't Room. There Can't Be.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Will Defend The Absolute Value Of Mozart Over Miley Cyrus, Of Course I Will, But We Should Be Wary Of False Dichotomies. You Do Not Have To Choose Between One Or The Other. You Can Have Both. The Human Cultural Jungle Should Be As Varied And Plural As The Amazonian Rainforest. We Are All Richer For Biodiversity. We May Decide That A Puma Is Worth More To Us Than A Caterpillar, But Surely We Can Agree That The Habitat Is All The Better For Being Able To Sustain Each.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 Most Important Philosophy I Think Is That Even If It Isn't True You Must Absolutely Assume There Is No Afterlife.

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

Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself And You Will Be Happy.

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.

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.

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

I Do Like Being Surprised By Directors And Producers And Being Offered Parts I Would Never Have Considered, Including Parts That Aren't Necessarily Obvious But Which Would Test Me.

If You Think You're Going To Have An Eternity In Which You Can Talk To Mozart And Chopin And Schopenhauer On A Cloud And Learn Stuff And You Know Really Get To Grips With Knowledge And Understanding And So You Won't Bother Now, I Think It's A Terrible, A Terrible Mistake.

People Sometimes Accuse Me Of Knowing A Lot. "stephen," They Say, Accusingly, "you Know A Lot." This Is A Bit Like Telling A Person Who Has A Few Grains Of Sand Clinging To Him That He Owns Much Sand. When You Consider The Vast Amount Of Sand There Is In The World Such A Person Is, To All Intents And Purposes, Sandless. We Are All Sandless. We Are All Ignorant. There Are Beaches And Deserts And Dunes Of Knowledge Whose Existance We Have Never Even Guessed At, Let Alone Visited.

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

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'd Probably Want To Teach At University, Because Children Would Drive Me Insane. I Suspect It Would Be English Literature, Shakespeare And So Forth. I've Always Been Deeply, Deeply In Love With That Kind Of Thing.

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

I Think Eros Should Be Dirty. In Greek Legend, As I'm Sure You Are Aware, He Fell In Love With The Minor Deity Psyche. It Was The Greek Way Of Saying That, In Spite Of What It May Believe, Love Pursues The Soul, Not The Body; The Erotic Desires The Psychic. If Love Was Clean And Wholesome He Wouldn't Lust After Psyche.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

But Happiness Is No Respecter Of Persons.

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

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

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

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.

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.

We Always Make The Mistake, The Fatal Mistake In The Case Of Military People, Of Imagining That Each War Will Be A Kind Of Version Of The One That Happened Previously.

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.

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.

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

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.

Nudity Is A Deep Worry If You Have A Body Like A Bin Bag Full Of Yoghurt, Which I Have.

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

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.

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

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

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

I Never Quite Dare To Believe I'm Brave Enough To Be An Artist, But I'm On The Side Of Artists. I Think Of Myself As A Bit Of A Salieri, Looking With Longing Eyes At Mozart.

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

Places Of Incredible Glamour, Possibility, Power, Excitement And Pleasure. Love Your Libraries!

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

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.

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.

Between Funny And Witty Falls The Shadow

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

[on Libraries] What's Great About Them Is That Anybody Can Go Into Them And Find A Book And Borrow It Free Of Charge And Read It. They Don't Have To Steal It From A Bookshop... You Know When You're Young, You're Growing Up, They're Almost Sexually Exciting Places Because Books Are Powerhouses Of Knowledge, And Therefore They're Kind Of Slightly Dark And Dangerous. You See Books That Kind Of Make You Go 'oh!'

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

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.

You Think Homosexuality Is Disgusting? Then, It Follows As The Night The Day, That You Find Sex Disgusting, For There Is Nothing Done Between Two Men Or Two Women That Is, By Any Objective Standard, Different From That Which Is Done Between A Man And A Woman.

That's Alright," Said Hugo. "i've Got Some Wine" Which Was About All He Seemed To Have. He Poured Out Two Mugfuls. "very Nice," Said Adrian, Sipping Appreciatively. "i Wonder How They Got The Cat To Sit On The Bottle." "it's Cheap, That's The Main Thing.

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'.

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.

The Email Of The Species Is Deadlier Than The Mail.

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.

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.

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