I flicked my eyes over to Steve again and saw him straighten. He would need a diversion just to start. โExplanations?โ I bellowed. โExplanations? Thereโs your explanationโฆthere!โ I stabbed a finger dramatically towards the far corner of the room. Pathetic, really. I mean, talk about the oldest trick in the book. But itโs a good book, and the trick would have been cut from subsequent editions if it didnโt sometimes work.
Stephen FrySelf 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 hatred's a subset of self pity and not the other way around - 'It destroys everything around it, except itself.'
Stephen FryNorwich is a fine city. None finer. If there is another city in the United Kingdom with a school of painters named after it, a matchless modern art gallery, a university with a reputation for literary excellence which can boast Booker Prize-winning alumni, one of the grandest Romanesque cathedrals in the world, and an extraordinary new state-of-the-art library then I have yet to hear of it.
Stephen Fry