Stephen Fry (author/actor) has a number of lovely things to say in this Onion interview and the bits that didn’t make it into the article but did make it onto the interviewer’s site.

Of political rhetoric: >A little-known early-20th-century philosopher talked about the capital-letter moralists. In other words, people who use words like ?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ?justice?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ? and ?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ?mercy?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ? with capital letters, as if they were somehow great coins that could be exchanged and everyone knew. But what a Frenchman means by ?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ?freedom?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ? and an American means by ?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ?freedom?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ? are utterly different things. They?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ¥re not interchangeable. And indeed, they?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ¥re not words that make much use. It?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ¥s always politicians who use words like ?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ?freedom?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ? and say things like that, ?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ?Let freedom reign.?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ? To put some sort of symmetry to our conversation, that?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ¥s partly what I mean by the importance of art. It makes things human-shaped, rather than idea-shaped.

Of satire: > I think, funnily enough, that when you set satire in the present… Satire and film very rarely go together. There are a few glorious, obvious counterexamples to that statement, but they’re not thick on the ground. In a sense, period drama, costume drama, is a bit like science fiction that looks backward rather than forward. It’s a way of writing or speaking or addressing your own time without being bogged down in its tedious details. If I’d set the film now, people would say, “Oh, is that supposed to be Nicky and Paris Hilton? Is that supposed to be Posh Spice and David Beckham? Is that supposed to be Camilla Parker-Bowles?” or whatever. All the guff of one’s own time. “Oh, they’re wearing Prada. They should be wearing Dolce & Gabbana.” Suddenly it becomes an awful style show. It sort of loses all its impact by being contemporary. It’s one of the paradoxes, I think, of that kind of satire. You can talk about humanity best when shorn of its present-day detail.

Of intellectualism: > I’m sometimes accused by my friends of being an intellectual, which I would heartily protest. Because I do believe that almost everything I do is based on my feelings, not on my intellect. Though I don’t know that that in itself isn’t an intellectual interpretation. But we won’t chase ourselves up that particular sentiment, or we’ll get lost.

p.s. (oYo)