Quotes from book
Moab Is My Washpot

Name: Moab Is My Washpot
Author: Stephen Fry

Moab Is My Washpot is Stephen Fry's autobiography, covering the first 20 years of his life. In the book, Fry is candid about his past indiscretions, including stealing, cheating and lying. The book covers some of the same ground as in Fry's first novel, The Liar, published in 1991. In that work, public schoolboy Adrian Healey falls in love with a boy called Hugo Cartwright; in the autobiography, 14-year-old Fry becomes besotted with 13-year-old "Matthew Osborne".

“My first words, as I was being born… I looked up at my mother and said, "that's the last time I'm coming out one of those."”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

On being gay
Stephen Fry actually admitted this was a quote from a friend, not himself. (Moab Is My Washpot)
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

“And then I saw him and nothing was ever the same again.

The sky was never the same colour, the moon never the same shape: the air never smelt the same, food never tasted the same. Every word I knew changed its meaning, everything that once was stable and firm became as insubstantial as a puff of wind, and every puff of wind became a solid thing I could feel and touch.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

“Choking with dry tears and raging, raging, raging at the absolute indifference of nature and the world to the death of love, the death of hope and the death of beauty, I remember sitting on the end of my bed, collecting these pills and capsules together and wondering why, why when I felt I had so much to offer, so much love, such outpourings of love and energy to spend on the world, I was incapable of being offered love, giving it or summoning the energy with which I knew I could transform myself and everything around me.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

“People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can’t”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

“Life, that can shower you with so much splendour, is unremittingly cruel to those who have given up.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Source: Moab Is My Washpot

“It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe, but not worth bothering with.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Referencing Oscar Wilde from the preface of "The Picture of Dorian Gray"; "All art is quite useless".
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Source: Moab Is My Washpot
Context: … but love, like all art, as Oscar said, it's quite useless. It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe but not worth bothering with.

“Life is sometimes novel-shaped, mocking the efforts of those authors who, in an effort to make their novels life-shaped, spurn the easy symmetry and cheap resonance of reality.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

“Sex without smiling is as sickly and as base as vodka and tonic without ice.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

“No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot