#writer: Stephen Fry

[marthajefferson]

BLACKADDER + iconic quotes

1983 - 1989, BBC, created and written by: Richard Curtis, Ben Elton & Rowan Atkinson, with: Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie, Miranda Richardson, Stephen Fry, Tony Robinson and Tim McInnerny.

[wouldyourecognizethisperson-poll]

[musingsofacuriousmind]

“It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.” ― Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot

[thepersonalwords]

Education is the sum of what students teach each other between lectures and seminars.

Stephen Fry

[trippercrazy]

Stephen Fry

[quotelr]

Education is the sum of what students teach each other between lectures and seminars.

Stephen Fry

[slouchingwriter]

Stephen Fry said social media is just a lavatory wall and I've not seen a better analogy. We're all sat here on our own, laughing at the back of a bathroom door because social media, too, is mostly ugly and absurd, but sometimes beautiful.

[motherbookerblog]

Bookish Post - September 2024 TBR Post

Another month and another TBR list. This is only my third TBR post because I don’t really like deciding what I’m reading in advance. My July TBR went horribly wrong when I only finished about 1 book on my list of 6. August proved a little better and I finished 4 of the 6. I have high hopes about September because a lot of books are being released. I pre-ordered quite a few of the years’ biggest…

[avi-on-jumblr]

awful tweet warning:

Before I describe everything that's wrong with this tweet, let me transcribe Stephen Fry's words:

I am Stephen Fry, and I am a Jew. The great Irish thinker and writer Conor Cruise O'Brien once said that antisemitism is a light sleeper. Well, it seems to have woken up of late. The horrendous events of October 7th, and the Israeli response, seem to have stirred up this ancient hatred. It's agonizing to see all violence and destruction that is unfolding, and the terrible loss of life on both sides brings me an overwhelming sadness and heartache. But whatever our opinions on what is happening, there can be no excuse for the behaviour of some of our citizens. Since October the 7th, there have been 50 separate reported incidents of antisemitism every single day in London alone, an increase of 1350%, according to the Metropolitan police. Shop windows smashed, stars of David and swastikas daubed on walls of Jewish properties, synagogues, and cemeteries. Jewish schools have been forced to close. There is real fear stalking the Jewish neighbourhoods of Britain. Jewish people here are becoming fearful of showing themselves, in Britain, in 2023.

(Then it cuts off.)

For those who still don't know why this tweet was ignorant and inane, let me explain.

"To hear him conflate antiZionism with antisemitism has shocked me."

Guess how many times Stephen Fry mentions zionism? Zero! Guess how many times he mentions the country of Israel? Zero! (Unless you count "the Israeli response" which is unrelated to the existence of the country, or Zionism at all.) What this person is saying, is that they consider the smashing of shop windows, and the vandalism and marking of Jewish property, to be anti-Zionism. Considering they are an anti-Zionist, by following their logic, we can conclude that they not only believe this destruction and harassment is acceptable, but they believe it is ethical.

Further, they accuse him of showing no care for the Palestinians, even though he explicitly states that the loss of life on both sides brings him overwhelming sadness.

Finally, they accuse him of "[Centring] people in this country". It is disturbing that this person believes one cannot be concerned over two issues at a time. It perpetuates the idea that we can only talk about the "worst oppression" and talking about anything else means you are complicit in "silencing" someone else. If this were true, we would not be allowed to talk about Gaza either, or Ukraine, or police brutality, racism, islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and so on and so on, because clearly there are other issues with hundreds of thousands more deaths, and millions more displacements, so why bring attention to it ever?

Unfortunately, people are not talking about those countries, like Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia, Congo, and more, and anyone who does is spammed with "free Palestine" comments. In fact, the most I've heard people talking about Sudan is when these TikTok geopolitical experts attempt to spam the Palestinian flag and get it wrong.

This is not new. This is obviously not new. I have seen tweets like these every single day in the hundreds for the last 80 days. It is not surprising that people think smashing windows is "anti-zionism", nor that they think it good. It is not surprising that they hear a Jew speak, and experience shock and disgust, regardless of what we say.

I do wonder if they would regard anything short of a second Holocaust as antisemitism.

[rwrbmovie]

Variety: Stephen Fry on Reprising the King in ‘Red, White & Royal Blue 2’ and Why Prince William and Harry Are ‘Very Gay-Friendly’

You played King James in “Red, White & Royal Blue.” I always tell younger people that it still astonishes me that something like this could get made.

It’s wonderful — shout out to [director and co-writer] Matthew López, who’s an extraordinary talent — and indeed that I would ever play Oscar Wilde in a film. That was an extraordinary idea. My little self would say, “No, this is fantasy. Fantasy is dangerous. The hope is what kills.” But part of me wants to fly back through time and just sort of rest on the shoulder of my young unhappy self and say, “It’s going to be all right. Don’t worry.”

When you’re on a set of something like “Red, White & Royal Blue,” do you think, “I am making the most mainstream queer story. As mainstream as queer could get.”

Yeah. We have reason sometimes to doubt the sense of the younger generation in some respects. And there’s that typical old fart behavior of myself. But I’m so impressed by their willingness and openness to play those roles, those two boys [Nicholas Galitzine and Taylor Zakhar Perez]. They were terrific at it. That’s the openness that I really treasure because I can remember when Rupert Graves and James Wilby were in “Maurice.” They were brilliant in the E.M. Forster adaptation, but I can remember how the business looked down on them and said, “But they’re both straight and doing that. That must be so embarrassing for them. How could they. Oh, gosh! How would they prepare for that?”

Will you play the king again in the “Red, White & Royal Blue” sequel?

Matthew’s become a friend and he’s told me he’s doing it. I’m hoping that he hasn’t left me out. We need the king. You’ve got to have the king.

🔗 full interview

[entheognosis]

Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it - that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.

Stephen Fry

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Photograph by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto.

* * * *

“Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it - that is your punishment. But if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”

--Stephen Fry

(Follies of God)

[zemagltd]

Everyday Poetry - "We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun." Stephen Fry

[radical-revolution]

“Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it - that is your punishment. But if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”

Stephen Fry

[thepersonalwords]

Education is the sum of what students teach each other between lectures and seminars.

Stephen Fry

[mybeingthere]

Vanessa Bell, 1879 - 1961, British painter and designer.

The eldest of four children and sister of the future Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell was born to a wealthy and intellectual family: her mother, Julia Jackson, was the niece of a pioneering photographer, Julia Cameron, and one of the favourite models of the pre-Raphaelites; her father was Sir Leslie Stephen, a famous writer and alpinist. As a young woman, in 1901, she studied at the London Royal Academy of Art. After their parents died, the children continued to live together in central London. Within the Bloomsbury Group, Vanessa organised artistic evenings she called the “Friday Club.”

In 1907 she married the art critic Clive Bell, with whom she would have two sons. Her early paintings – Iceland Poppies (1908-1909), for example – show the joint influence of the American painters John Singer Sargent and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. She gradually became interested in Impressionism, particularly French post-Impressionism. A great admirer of Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro and Vincent Van Gogh, she painted portraits with synthetic outlines, simplified shapes and bold colours, like the portrait of her sister, Virginia Woolf (1912).

She made her first venture into decorative arts in 1910 with the Scottish painter Duncan Grant, with whom she had a daughter, Angelica, in 1918. The pair would work together throughout their lives. She painted boxes with geometric shapes that followed the aesthetic principle her husband had developed: the predominance of the “significant form” and of its outline and colour over the narrative subject. She took part in two exhibitions organised by Roger Fry in 1912: Quelques indépendants anglais (Barbazanges Gallery, Paris) and his second exhibition of post-impressionist art at the Grafton Galleries in London.

The following year, encouraged by Fry, she opened the Omega Workshops with Grant in London’s Fitzroy Square, where Woolf also lived. Inspired by the Wiener Werkstätte (the Viennese workshops) and Parisian fashion and interior design studios like Paul Poiret’s “Maison Martine,” the Omega Workshops employed artists on a daily basis to create fabric patterns, furniture, and interior design projects, thus promoting a dialogue between painting and decorative arts, in a search for equality between major and minor arts. In May 1914, she assisted Grant in Paris in the creation of costumes for Jacques Copeau’s staging of Twelfth Night, and visited the studios of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Upon returning to London, she created a special section devoted to fashion at Omega.

From the article by Cécile Godefroy