Quotes by Stephen Fry

“It is a cliche that most cliches are true, but then like most cliches, that cliche is untrue”

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

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.

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.

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.

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

An original idea. That cant be too hard. The library must be full of them.

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

Compromise is a stalling between two fools.

Its not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.

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

But an Adrian also knew that an Adrians lies were real: they were lived and felt and acted out as thoroughly as another mans truths - if other men had truths - and he believed it possible that this last lie might see him through to the grave.

Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins - is self pity. 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 hatreds a subset of self pity and not the other way around - It destroys everything around it, except itself . Self pity will destroy relationships, itll destroy anything thats good, it will fulfill all the prophecies it makes and leave only itself. And its so simple to imagine that one is hard done by, and that things are unfair, and that one is underappreciated, and that if only one had had a chance at this, only one had had a chance at that, things would have gone better, you would be happier if only this, that one is unlucky. All those things. And some of them may well even be true. But, to pity oneself as a result of them is to do oneself an enormous disservice.I think its one of things we find unattractive about the american culture, a culture which I find mostly, extremely attractive, and I like americans and I love being in america. But, just occasionally there will be some example of the absolutely ravening self pity that they are capable of, and you see it in their talk shows. Its an appalling spectacle, and its so self destructive. 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 its all blank pages, and the first page would just say - Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself - And you will be happy . Use the rest of the book to write down your interesting thoughts and drawings, and thats what the book would be, and it would be true. And it sounds like Oh thats so simple, because its not simple to stop feeling sorry for yourself, its bloody hard. Because we do feel sorry for ourselves, its what Genesis is all about.

People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can’t

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.

There are times when Im doing QI and Im going, Ha ha, yeah, yeah, and inside Im going I want to fucking die. I … want … to … fucking … die.(Source : RHLSTP #18 - @87min32s)

Nobody seems to understand that in such matters the tact and sympathy should come from the one who is about to die, not the poor bugger who has to take the news.

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.