Цитаты из книги The Fry Chronicles

When people complain that they don't know any literature because it was badly taught at school, or that they missed out on history because on the timetable it was either thar or biology, or some such ludicrous excuse, it is har not to react in the same way. "But it's all around you!" I want to scream.

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

If a thing can be said in ten words, I may be relied upon to take a hundred to say it. I ought to apologize for that. I ought to prune, pare and extirpate excess growth, but I will not. I like words - strike that, I love words - and while I am fond of the condensed and economical use of them in poetry, in song lyrics, in Twitter, in good journalism and smart advertising, I love the luxuriant profusion and mad scatter of them too.

You read about people falling suddenly in love, about romantic thunderbolts that go with clashing cymbals, high quivering strings and resounding chords and you read about eyes that meet across the room to the thudding twang of Cupid's bow, but it is less often that you read about collaborative love at first sight, about people who instantly discover that they were born to work together or born to be natural and perfect friends. (on meeting Hugh Laurie)

Is that where it all went wrong? Or is it where it all went right?

I will defend the the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest.

One 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.

And finally there was the film's star, Anthony Hopkins, a man from whom charisma, power and virility radiated with a force that was frankly frightening. I had been faintly obsessed with him ever since his blue eyes burnt out of the screen at me in Richard Attenborough's Young Winston. ... I had only one scene, but since it was with Hopkins himself it was in my mind as good a role as Michael Corleone and Rhett Butler combined.

A university is not, thank heavens, a place for vocational instruction, it has nothing to do with training for a working life and career, it is a place for education, something quite different. A real education takes place, not in the lecture hall or library, but in the rooms of friends, with earnest frolic and happy disputation. Wine can be a wiser teacher than ink, and banter better than books.