Stephen Fry

So the Chaos that began everything is also the Chaos that will end everything.

The Greeks created gods that were in their image: warlike but creative, wise but ferocious, loving but jealous, tender but brutal, compassionate but vengeful.

Their myths understand that whoever created this baffling world, with its cruelties, wonders, caprices, beauties, madness and injustice, must themselves have been cruel, wonderful, capricious, beautiful, mad and unjust

History is my passion, my calling. Or, to be more painfully truthful, it is my field of least incompetence.

Get your head round that one. It means that it is my job to tell you the true story of what never happened. Perhaps that’s a definition of fiction.

scraped the gilt off the gingerbread

Coined the phrase