“They are just 100 per cent bear, whereas human beings feel we're not 1...” — Stephen Fry Quote

They are just 100 per cent bear, whereas human beings feel we're not 100 per cent human, that we're always letting ourselves down. We're constantly striving towards something, to some fulfilment.

Personally, I'd never seen a graphic novel. I knew they existed because friends of mine like Jonathan Ross collect them and some very literate and intelligent people really rate the graphic novel as a form.

The alarm in the morning? Well, I have an old tape of Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a perfectly transcendent version in Shubert's seventh symphony. And I've rigged it up so that at exactly 7:30 every morning it falls from the ceiling onto my face.

It is exhausting knowing that most of the time the phone rings, most of the time there's an email, most of the time there's a letter, someone wants something of you.

No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.

I do have a nickname with my family; I'm called Snappy, because I do get to be a bit snippy at times. They call me Snappy Bear. That's from New Hampshire. My dad's called Crazy, my mother's Happy - it's a whole thing.

I love physical books, can't bear to throw them away, and am drowning under the weight of my collection, but I do a lot of my work reading now on my iPad.

It's that kind of Dublin mentality: you just have to grin and bear some things.

I like to take a long time over breakfast, and I can't bear to talk. If a guest is a breakfast talker it's very important to invite another so they can talk to each other. Otherwise they spoil the newspaper reading and everything else.