Weather is real. It is absolutely real: when it rains, it rains โ you get wet, there is no question about it. It is also true about weather that you canโt control it; you canโt say if I wish hard enough it wonโt rain. It is equally true that if the weather is bad one day it will get better and what I had to learn was to treat my moods like the weather.
Stephen FryIf you know someone whoโs depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isnโt a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather. Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness theyโre going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. Itโs hard to be a friend to someone whoโs depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.
Stephen FryChoking with dry tears and raging, raging, raging at the absolute indifference of nature and the world to the death of love, the death of hope and the death of beauty, I remember sitting on the end of my bed, collecting these pills and capsules together and wondering why, why when I felt I had so much to offer, so much love, such outpourings of love and energy to spend on the world, I was incapable of being offered love, giving it or summoning the energy with which I knew I could transform myself and everything around me.
Stephen FryOne of the most unattractive human traits, and so easy to fall into, is resentment at the sudden shared popularity of a previously private pleasure. Which of us hasn't been annoyed when a band, writer, artist or television series that had been a minority interest of ours has suddenly achieved mainstream popularity? When it was at a cult level we moaned at the philistinism of a world that didn't appreciate it, and now that they do appreciate it we're all resentful and dog-in-the-manger about it.
Stephen FryThis new England we have invented for ourselves is not interested at all in education. It is only interested in training, both material and spiritual. Education means freedom, it means ideas, it means truth. Training is what you do to a pear tree when you pleach it and prune it to grow against a wall. Training is what you give an airline pilot or a computer operator or a barrister or a radio producer. Education is what you give children to enable them to be free from the prejudices and moral bankruptcies of their elders.
Stephen Fry