Quotes from Stephen Fry

Get into the Carmichael car, Michael Carmichael … get into the Carmichael car, Michael Carmichael.

Other people's tears were more than Adrian could cope with. Did you put an arm round them? Did you pretend not to notice?

Et in arcadia ego.' Why should they notice it? Its shadow will be on them soon enough and they in turn will be wagging fingers at their children and saying, 'I too once lived in arcadia, you know …' and their children will not listen either.

You're on the list. If you had anything to do with this piece of shit then you are in trouble.

The trick of being a good guest is never to ask any questions about the composition of the household. Hosts, even the grandest, are nervous creatures and interpret curiosity as evidence of dissatisfaction.

The memory of pain soon goes, the memory of pleasure lingers, that is one of life's happier truths.

Civilisation, after all, is not an attitude of mind, it is an attribute of wealth

He knew he could never jingle change in his pocket or park his car like a confident adult, he was the Adrian he had always been, casting a guilty look over a furtive shoulder, living in eternal dread of a grown-up striding forward to clip his ear.

Oh, I play this rather defeated father and husband who's going through a divorce.' 'You!' the actor is unable or unwilling to hide the contempt, outrage and disapproval in his voice. 'What the hell would you know about that?' I grin tightly and move on. So I should be playing nothing but celibate gay men? Is that how acting works?

well, as Auden wondered: Will it come like a change in the weather? Will its greeting be courteous or rough? Will it alter my life altogether? O tell me the truth about love.

It is, I know, for I have experienced it perhaps twice in my life, an awful privilege to be too much loved and perhaps the kindest thing I ever did in my life was never to let Matthew know to what degree he had destroyed my peace and my happiness.

Intuition he did not reject. He knew that it is part of our equipment, and the sensitiveness he valued in himself and in others is connected with it. But he also knew that it can make dancing dervishes of us all, and that the man who believes a thing is true because he feels it in his bones, is not really very far removed from the man who believes it on the authority of a policeman's truncheon.

1725. The year of The Tour Seasons. The year that Peter the Great became less so, in that he died.

countercantabrigianism.

The future is a much bigger deal than the past

Of course the Greeks were not the only people to weave a tapestry of legends and lore out of the puzzling fabric of existence.

Since my earliest years I felt nothing but shame for the useless casing of flesh I inhabit.

Today it was commerce that Europe valued and it was the businessmen who, having exploited what the scientists and thechnologits had done for the world, now reaped the rewards.

by the time your offspring have reached four and five it is far too late to be looking for schools: demand for private education is so high that children must be put down for admission not at birth but in utero, ideally before their first cells have divided.

The Graeae's names, as so often in Greek myth, have meanings. Pemphredo is "she who guides the way," Enyo "warlike," and Dino "terrible" (as in dinosaur, which means "terrible lizard").

If days be good, they shall pass, which is a lowering thought. If they be bad, they shall pass, which is cheering.

The maple brings tourists who come to marvel at the blazing colours of the autumn leaves and it brings cash dollars in the form of the unctuous, faintly metallic syrup that Americans like to pour all over their breakfast, on waffles and pancakes certainly, but on bacon too. Sounds alarming to English ears, but actually it is rather delicious. Like crack, crystal meth, and Chocolate HobNobs, one nibble and you're hooked for life.

A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring

I suppose people were trying to be kind and protect me from the humiliation of discovering that, even after an operation to straighten my ridiculous nose, I would still look a mess. The trauma of finding out that a straight-nosed Stephen looked every bit as unappetising as a bent-nosed Stephen might have tipped me completely over the edge.