I like to think of myself at home in the armchair, writing, smoking and occasionally wandering down the shop.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a sense of comfort in solitude and the creative process.
In this quote, Stephen Fry conveys the joy and contentment he finds in a simple, quiet life filled with writing and occasional outings. The imagery of being at home in an armchair suggests a personal sanctuary where creativity flourishes, and the mention of wandering down to the shop adds a touch of everyday reality, emphasizing the balance between introspection and engaging with the world.
In practice
Sharing this quote in a writing workshop to encourage participants to find comfort in their creative spaces.
I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.
To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.
There comes a time when the blankness of the future is just so extreme, it's like such a black wall of nothingness. Not of bad things like a cave full of monsters and so, you're afraid of entering it. It's just nothingness, the void, emptiness and it is just horrible. It's like contemplating a future-less future and so you just want to step out of it. The monstrosity of being alive overwhelms you.
As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the 90s, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it'll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth.
It's now very common to hear people say 'I'm rather offended by that'.
You can't just say there is a God because well, the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children. You have to account for the fact that almost all animals in the wild live under stress with not enough to eat and will die violent and bloody deaths. There is not any way that you can just choose the nice bits and say that means there is a God and ignore the true fact of what nature is.
Inscribe all human effort with one word, artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!
I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.
The spirit of the drum is something that you feel but cannot put your hands on,_x000D_ It does something to you from the inside out . . ._x000D_ It hits people in so many different ways._x000D_ But the feeling is one that is satisfying and joyful._x000D_ It is a feeling that makes you say to yourself, '_x000D_ I'm glad to be alive today! I'm glad to be part of this world!
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
The Chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chessboard, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem
One does not read a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks with hopes that it will grant him a career in engineering; he does so because poetry helps him see something in the world that he might not have seen before.
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