The Ode Less Travelled Quotes

“The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn. The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight the advancing tides of Franglais and international prefabrication. English, by comparison, is a shameless whore.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

“I have a dark and dreadful secret. I write poetry... I believe poetry is a primal impulse within all of us. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

“We don't stop talking about how the world might be better just because we have no chance of making it to Prime Minister. We are all politicians. We are all artists. In an open society everything the mind and hands can achieve is our birthright. It is up to us to claim it.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

“Can there really be a form of verse where all that counts is the number of syllables in a line? No patterning of stress at all? What is the point?

Well, that is a fair and intelligent question and I congratulate myself for asking it.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

“You have already achieved the English-Language poet's most important goal: you can read, Write and speak English well enough to understand this sentence.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

“Mankind can live free in a society hemmed in by laws, but we have yet to find a historical example of mankind living free in lawless anarchy.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

“I believe that poetry is a primal impulse within us all.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

“If that kind of poetry doesn’t make your bosom heave then I fear we shall never be friends.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

“In normal speech and prose our thoughts and feelings are diluted (by stock phrases and roundabout approximations); in poetry those thoughts and feelings can be, must be, concentrated.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

“Unlike musical notation, paint or clay, language is inside every one of us. For free. We are all proficient at it. We already have the palette, the paints and the instruments. We don’t have to go and buy any reserved materials. Poetry is made of the same stuff you are reading now, the same stuff you use to order pizza over the phone, the same stuff you yell at your parents and children, whisper in your lover’s ear and shove into an e-mail, text or birthday card. It is common to us all.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within