Quotes from Stephen Fry

Could they remember the first time they felt the sweeping rush of love? Love came to peasants, kings, and even gods. Love made all equal. Love deified, yet love leveled.

Few people in one's life ever go quite away. They turn up again like characters in a Simon Raven novel. It is as if Fate is a movie producer who cannot afford to keep introducing new characters into the script but must get as many scenes out of every actor as possible.

The Olympians enjoy the mauling and brawling of their playthings, their little human pets

From hero to zero is a tired phrase today

And for the first time I looked into his eyes. They were blue, not light blue, but a darker blue. Not so dark as sapphire blue, not so bright as china blue. They were romantically blue. Lyrically blue. They swam and I swam in them.

For nine years the Trojan War was more plunder than thunder

If that kind of poetry doesn't make your bosom heave then I fear we shall never be friends.

They say a fool and his gold are soon parted, but they ought to say too that those who refuse ever to be parted from gold are the greatest fools of all.

Life, that can shower you with so much splendour, is unremittingly cruel to those who have given up. Thank the gods there is such a thing as redemption, the redemption that comes in the form of other people the moment you are prepared to believe that they exist.

A Hungarian Jew, as he looked to observe, is the only man who can follow you into a revolving door and come out first.

In a fight, do not do what you want to do, but what you judge your enemy least wants you to.

His heart lifted to a state approaching something like happiness, however, when he heard, unexpectedly, the sound of Rhea's low sweet voice humming gently to herself as she came up the slope towards the mountaintop. Loveliest sister and dearest wife! It was quite natural that she had been a little upset by his consumption of their six children, but she surely understood that he had had no choice. She was a Titan, she knew about duty and destiny.

Poseidon spent almost all his time pursuing a perfectly exhausting quantity of beautiful girls and boys and fathering by the girls an even greater number of monsters, demigods and human heroes – Percy Jackson and Theseus to name but two.

I had an honest, ordered, respectable and unexciting life to look forward to. I had sown my wild oats and it was time to grow sage. Or so I imagined.

Such attitudes are grotesque, impudent and irrelevant. 'Could do better' is a meaningless conclusion. 'Could be happier' is the only one that counts.

A small proportion to be spent on production, the rest for wine and senseless riot.

That's an interesting point,' said Adrian, 'in the sense of not being interesting at all.

Even as he breathed his last breath he killed more Trojans. Terrified by the sight of a mortally wounded man with such implacable strength and will, most held back, unsure that such a man could really die.

Well, we all know how satisfying it is to recite the shortcomings and hollowness of others - especially those who have money and recognition where we have none. It is certainly more pleasurable than inspecting our own shortcomings.

Although Achilles wore no armour, the mere sight of him, standing high on the embankment, bathed in an unearthly light and uttering the most piercing and monumental battle-cry was enough to scatter the Trojans. Three times Achilles yelled his terrible war cry. The Trojans and even their horses were filled with fear. In triumph the Achaeans bore the body of Patroclus back to their camp.

The point is that a pleasure which leaves you satisfied stops being a pleasure the moment it has been enjoyed. You are now sated, there is nothing more to be got from it. Sex and food are pleasures of this kind. What follows? A touch of afterglow if you are that sort of person, but mostly guilt, flatulence and self-disgust.

Am I the same person i was fifty years ago? Every molecule and cell of my body has been replaced many times over.

The plans of the immortals, however, are as subject to the cruel tricks of Moros as are the plans of mortals.

Nestor considered awhile before speaking, a habit of his that irked many but which guaranteed that nothing foolish ever came from his mouth.