Stephen Fry Quotes

Whatever I'm reading at the moment seems to influence whatever I'm writing.

I could tell you which writer's rhythms I am imitating. It's not exactly plagiarism, it's falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.

The books I read, if they intrude on my writing, do so as weather will pass through and touch a landscape - affecting it, yes, but only now and then leaving a permanent mark.

Long before I started to write in earnest, Lorrie Moore taught me you could have a woman narrator who was funny and complex and even wrongheaded. She opened up a lot of space that me and a million other women rushed into.

The books you read as a young person are books that stay with you forever. I think that is the biggest privilege of writing for young people. You feel like you can help shape somebody.

When I was younger, I would write a ton, mostly because my mom told me I had incredible creativity and a gift of using words, only these were words that didn't get me in trouble.

The pen and the written word hold a great deal of power.

Big writers become a kind of shared climate.

Kindness is more persuasive than force.

We like to pile language on language. Hunter [ S. Thompson] was an influence on me, no doubt about it.

I feel more comfortable writing firmly comedic or slightly comedic stuff.

About four years ago I made a list, for my own amusement, of the playwrights, the contemporary playwrights, by whom critics said I'd been influenced. I listed twenty-five. It included five playwrights whose work I didn't know, so I read these five playwrights and indeed now I suppose I can say I have been influenced by them. The problem is that the people who write these articles find the inevitable similarities of people writing in the same generation, in the same century, and on the same planet, and they put them together in a group.

I started out of course with Hemingway when I learned how to write. Until I realized Hemingway doesn't have a sense of humor. He never has anything funny in his stories.

I have admired Melissa Pritchard's writing for several years now for its wisdom, its humble elegance, and its earthy comedy.

You do not get more with honey than with vinegar!

Kindness effects more than severity.

I hope people find my movies funny and will watch them years from now. And, in terms of writing, I hope that something remains that will not seem old-fashioned, that will still have a ­vibrancy to it 50 years from now.

I loved languages, and loved learning languages. It was fantastic. But I was alone there. I remember that time as a real Virginia Woolf time. More than any language it was her language that influenced me.

My family was big on sharing. I guess it was just the way I was brought up. Or maybe, I read those fairy tales in which one good turn elicits another. But in writing, yes, some older writers were kind to me when I was young; although some others were not.

He is gentle that doeth gentle deeds.

I am kinder to my body. I don't try to prove anything to myself or others. I keep thinking about the need to go slower, gentler and maintain a sense of humor about it all.

How gentle and tender ought we to be with others who are foolish when we remember how foolish we are ourselves

When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry. And the reason for that is because the fiction writers seemed to need to learn how to pay greater attention to language itself, to the way that language works.

What people like are things to laugh at. Funny shows. It's all in the execution, the writing and the characters, not the setting. And the writing and the execution and the characters are GREAT on (Everybody Loves Raymond).

A person influenced by circumstances can become viciously envious or affectionately kind. Our company and our surroundings have a crucial effect on our consciousness. How important it is to be an instrument to bring out the inherent good of each other rather than the worst.