Stephen Fry in America Quotes

“Somewhere along the line the American love affair with wilderness changed from the thoughtful, sensitive isolationism of Thoreau to the bully, manly, outdoorsman bravado of Teddy Roosevelt. It is not for me, as an outsider, either to bemoan or celebrate this fact, only to observe it. Deep in the male American psyche is a love affair with the backwoods, log-cabin, camping-out life.

There is no living creature here that cannot, in its right season, be hunted or trapped. Deer, moose, bear, squirrel, partridge, beaver, otter, possum, raccoon, you name it, there's someone killing one right now. When I say hunted, I mean, of course, shot at with a high-velocity rifle. I have no particular brief for killing animals with dogs or falcons, but when I hear the word 'hunt' I think of something more than a man in a forage cap and tartan shirt armed with a powerful carbine. In America it is different. Hunting means 'man bonding with man, man bonding with son, man bonding with pickup truck, man bonding with wood cabin, man bonding with rifle, man bonding above all with plaid'.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“Not the absolute last place in which you would imagine Rudyard Kipling writing ‘Gunga Din’ and The Jungle Book, but surely not the first, either. Yet he did. And ‘Mandalay’ too, ‘where the flyin’-fishes play’, in Battleboro, VT, the home of his American wife, Carrie.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“As all travellers know, the experience of a foreign country teaches about your own.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“The memory of pain soon goes, the memory of pleasure lingers, that is one of life's happier truths.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“I am faced then with two options:  a) a nightclub filled with the rich, beautiful and famous or b) an early night alone in bed with a book.  Never has any decision been easier.
The book was gripping.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“People (even Americans) often find it difficult to talk about themselves.  Poetry gives them a kind of verbal costume in which they can express themselves with more dignity and confidence than the common dress of everyday speech will allow.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“Sometimes political correctness exists more in the furious minds of its enemies than in reality, which gets n with compromise and common sense without too much hysteria.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“The maple brings tourists who come to marvel at the blazing colours of the autumn leaves and it brings cash dollars in the form of the unctuous, faintly metallic syrup that Americans like to pour all over their breakfast, on waffles and pancakes certainly, but on bacon too. Sounds alarming to English ears, but actually it is rather delicious. Like crack, crystal meth, and Chocolate HobNobs, one nibble and you're hooked for life.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“On the night of 23 August 2005 came Katrina,”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“There won’t be many species of whale and gorilla left by 2020.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“the Delaware Memorial Bridge, the longest twin-span suspension bridge in the world.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“New York State is bigger than England.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“unctuous, faintly metallic syrup that Americans like to pour all over their breakfast, on waffles and pancakes certainly, but on bacon too. Sounds alarming to English ears, but actually it is rather delicious. Like crack, crystal meth and Chocolate HobNobs, one nibble and you’re hooked for life.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“I murmur sympathy, which is genuine. To me, all religions are equally nonsensical and the idea that Christians, with their particular invisible friends, virgin births, immaculate conceptions and bread turning into flesh, could have the cheek to mock people like Laurie for being ‘superstitious’ is appalling humbug.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“. . . all nations twist history and cleanse their heroes in order to express an ideal to live up to.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“[In Montana at the fenced US-Canada Border]
Not for the first time I am forced to contemplate the melancholy truth that, in one significant way at least, Al-Qaeda has won. Its victory in the interior of the United States may not be complete, but it is enough. Through one outrageous and atrocious act and the credible threat of more, they hage ensured that America's freedom and conveniences have been unprecendently curtailed. Queuing up for security checks in every international amd domestic airport, having one's sun-cream, nail scissors amd mineral water binned and one's patience worn down, these are minor but palpable victories. No one spdays say it in the queues as they build and build, it would be considered unpatriotic. That fact, that the truth itself is now unlatriotic, that too is a victory, Al Qaeda have cost the US and its citizens unbillilns in tkme and manpower, in incinvenience and stress. And along with the thousands and thousands of miles of international borders, they are costing American tax-payers billions more. New helicopters, thousands of new recruits. The bill is incaculable.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America

“[In South Carolina listening to Gullah-speakers sing spiritials] As with bluegrass in Tennessee I am reminded once more of the extraordinary power that comes from music that is played in the place where it was born.”
― Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry in America