In 2006, actor Stephen Fry received a letter from a girl struggling with depression. This was his response.

(Source: twloha)

❝ One of the traps of adolescence is the sort of paranoid resentment that somehow you’re never going to match up and that everybody else’s life is going to be better and finer and fuller. That everyone else attended some secret lesson in which how to live was taught and you had a dental appointment that day, or you were somehow not invited. ❞

Stephen Fry

also: traps of being a 20-something

(via violethavok) (via carefulpatterns)

❝ Swearing is a really important part of one’s life. It would be impossible to imagine going through life without swearing, and without enjoying swearing. There used to be mad, silly, prissy people who used to say swearing was a sign of a poor vocabulary. It is such utter nonsense. The people I know who swear the most tend to have the widest vocabularies, and the kind of person who says swearing is a sign of a poor vocabulary usually have a poor vocabulary themselves. The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest is just a fucking lunatic. I haven’t met anybody who’s truly shocked at swearing… really. They’re only shocked on behalf of other people. Well, you know, that’s preposterous. Or they say, “It’s not necessary,” as if that should stop one doing it. It’s not necessary to have coloured socks, it’s not necessary for this cushion to be here, but is anyone going to write in and say, “I was shocked to see that cushion there, it really wasn’t necessary”? No. Things not being necessary is what makes life interesting. The little extras in life. ❞

Stephen Fry (via fuckyeahstephenfry)

The short answer to that is ‘no’. The long answer is ‘f*** no’.

❝ You are who you are when nobody’s watching. ❞

Stephen Fry

❝ I am perhaps happier now than I have ever been and yet I cannot but recognise that I would trade all that I am to be you, the eternally unhappy, nervous, wild, wondering and despairing 16-year-old Stephen: angry, angst-ridden and awkward but alive. Because you know how to feel, and knowing how to feel is more important than how you feel. Deadness of soul is the only unpardonable crime, and if there is one thing happiness can do it is mask deadness of soul. ❞

Stephen Fry’s letter to himself (via doyleheima)

First Love Is Always Unrequited

Stephen Fry: You know, you get a little flashback every now and again.  It will never leave you and it teaches you to look at things differently and to feel things differently.  It educates your soul if you like, and all first love is unrequited ultimately because it’s so huge.  It’s such an act of giving and it requires so much back that it can never be given back and in that you wouldn’t necessarily want to give them back.  It’s just like a…  It is like an atom bomb.  It is like…  It’s all the energy of who you are and who you want to be and what you love and what you hope to be explodes, and it is impossible for a single human being to offer that back to you in a mutual way.  It would be like matter meeting antimatter.