“On one hand we want the world to be perfect but we don’t want to pay more tax. We want the environment sorted and to keep our cars. No one can square these circles. […] We think that what’s wrong with the country is not us, but the person next to us. We prefer to say it’s the fault of some Scot who happens to be the Prime Minister – that’s just not the way the world works, in my view.” — [x]

“Everyone I know, whom I deeply respect and like and think is honest, would never become a politician, because they’re not allowed to be normal human beings by the press, by us.” — [x]

[x]

“When people get angry with a traffic warden they don’t stop and think what it would be like to be a traffic warden or how annoying it would be if people could park wherever they liked. People talk lazily about how hypocritical politicians are. But everyone is. On the one hand we hate that petrol is expensive and on the other we go on about global warming. We abrogate the responsibility for thought and moral decisions onto others and then have the luxury of saying it’s not good enough.” — [x]

“When I was about 17 … going around London on two stolen credit cards, it was a sort of fantastic reinvention of myself, an attempt to. I bought ridiculous suits with stiff collars and silk ties from the 1920s, and would go to the Savoy and Ritz and drink cocktails.” — [x]

“

When I was a teenager, fully aware that I was gay, I was reading - the only things I could read in the library were stories - either novels, which all ended in suicide, death, shame, exposure, imprisonment, or reading biographies of people that ended in shame, exposure, or indeed just total secrecy.

It looked like a pretty grim life for me. I was either going to be some sort of sad librarian in a little university or something - if I couldn’t make it that, or - or I would have to go to some - you know, to Tangier or some exotic place which is where gay people used to go and have a relative amount of freedom.

I could never imagine the results of gay liberation, as it was originally called. You know, Stonewall, the rights there, the rise of gay consciousness and pride and all these things.

” — [x]

“Toy Story 3 is a perfect example of 3D done properly. The story’s so good you almost forget it’s 3D. That’s not a criticism, that’s how it should be. It’s the same with a film’s musical score. When you forget it’s there it’s doing its job properly. There’ll be a ‘bedding in’ period where everyone will be trying to make the audience duck away from floating titles but people will soon realise that has no value and doesn’t enhance the story.” — [x]

• Q: What piece of advice would you give to Stephen Fry, aged 10.
• A: You're not alone. Everything you feel is fine. Only feel guilty about things you have done that are mean and cheap and unkind. Don't feel guilty about what you feel, no matter what the world might think.
•  Everyone is scared inside, not just you. That's why reading is so good. Keep doing it. Writers are people brave enough to make you feel better about being human because they're not afraid to reveal their own frailties, weaknesses, desires, failures, and appetites.

• Q: What cliche do you most abhor?
• A: "We're all singing from the same hymn-sheet on this one." I mean, what? I was delighted to hear a Kiwi, just the other day, come up with a much more likeable way of expressing the same idea. "We're all surfing the same wave ..." so Antipodean. I should imagine in Wellington the phrase would be, "We're all riding up the same mountain ..." Wellingtonians seem to think riding bicycles up steep hills is fun. It isn't. It's lung-bursting agony and you must stop it at once.

• Amazon.co.uk: What makes a good audio book?
• Fry: If the original story is no good, then forget it. No matter how good the reader, they can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. But when the story is good, it's all about suitability to the tale, the key thing is for the reader not to show off, after a while you should forget that they are there, just as you forget that the writer is there when you are reading. The characters should speak for themselves and there shouldn't be too much characterisation, enough for the different characters to be distinguishable, but not so much that it becomes all show offy. that's the ideal I think.