Stephen Fry quotes from QI

Stephen Fry

They say of the Acropolis, where the Parthenon is … [Stephen flubs the line, causing the panellists to rib him mercilessly for the next 3-4 minutes as he tries to nail it for the recording - he eventually manages to force out to great applause:] … there are no straight lines!

Jimmy Carr

Do they? [sigh]

Alan Davies

Whatever …

Stephen Fry

What's the most famous line from a Tarzan film?

Ronni Ancona

Oh, "Me Tarzan, you Jane."

Stephen Fry

Yes, except of course it never happened.

Ronni Ancona

What?!

David Mitchell

Why do these films always forget to put their most famous lines in?

Stephen Fry

How has the Eurovision Song Contest made Europe a better place?

How has it made it a better place? Because it has, as you can see, the dove, it has brought together the nations of Europe-

Stephen Fry

Has it arse, it's divided East from West.

Stephen Fry

In order to prove mathematics from the very beginning, you have to establish the first principle of arithmetic, and that piece of symbolic logic was proving that one plus one equals two.

David Mitchell

It’s a bit late, the 20th century, to prove that, I’d say.

Stephen Fry

A bit late?

David Mitchell

You’ve got quite a lot riding by the 20th century on one plus one being two, you know? There’s quite a lot of engineering happening. Quite a complex international economy. If you find out that it doesn’t equal two, what do we do? Just burn everything! God know anything could fall on our heads. Money, you might as well eat it. Forget civilisation!

Rob Brydon

Was that before or after email?

Stephen Fry

[grins] It's... close. They were spamming though, you'd get endless streams! [pretending to fan smoke] "do-you-want-a-big-ger-cock?"

Stephen Fry

What happened to the fireman's pole?

Rob Brydon

He tiled the fireman's bathroom.

Rob Brydon

I'm from the same town as Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins.

Stephen Fry

And Michael Sheen.

Rob Brydon

And Michael Sheen, of course. In fact, my father grew up in the same street, literally the same street, as Anthony Hopkins.

Stephen Fry

Yeah... In England we live in houses.

Stephen Fry

You know how sometimes it can be too cold to snow, yeah?

Rob Brydon

Is that a question?

Stephen Fry

Yeah. You know how it can be too cold to snow?

Rob Brydon

Yes, because you need some moisture...

Rob Brydon

You really hate me, don’t you?

Stephen Fry

[while explaining about the formula used to determine the number of times a paper could be folded] … what you need is length and thickness.

Alan Davies

That will get ripped off and straight onto YouTube. That will also become a ringtone. "What you need is length and thickness." [mimes accepting a call] "Hello?"

Stephen Fry

Damn you all. You want--

Alan Davies

And that'll be for text messages.

Stephen Fry

I believe, that you, as it happens, obviously, like Alan, felt some erotic feelings towards your instructor, is that correct?

I did. I took a shine to the instructor. I think that’s why I jumped out the aircraft, really. Cos I wanted to impress him.

Johnny Vegas

I often do that. If I like a woman, I jump out of the window.

Stephen Fry

Do you know what the French for "flying fish" is?

Alan Davies

Poisson … d'aeroplane …?

Stephen Fry

What's the opposite of a flying fish?

Sean Lock

Tunnelling flamingo!

Stephen Fry

Name something that's much easier to do when you're wearing boxing gloves.

Sean Lock

Frisk a porcupine.

Stephen Fry

Very good!

Johnny Vegas

Give up masturbating!

It's a shame it doesn't make any difference, because I've been using the fact that I don't shave my legs as an excuse for going five hours slower than the guy who won.

Stephen Fry

Which stage did you do?

There's an open stage every year. An amateur stage. You do it two weeks before they do it. Eight thousand of us, and by the end, there were four thousand of us left at the end of it. I started in 2400th place, and I finished in 3400th place.

Stephen Fry

Oh no.

Alan Davies

You mean a thousand people overtook you?

I was passed by a thousand people. And it took me... it took eleven hours to do this stage. The winner of the actual proper stage when they did it the next week was a guy called Vinokourov, I think his name was. He did it in five hours, but he was using someone else’s blood. And he was thrown out of the stage that night for blood doping.

Phill Jupitus

[Laughing.] Someone else’s blood!

But it took me nine hours to catch up to the bloke with the one leg.

Phill Jupitus

[on the Bayeux Tapestry] That says 'Wil 6 Elm'.

Alan Davies

Normmano. I like that.

Phill Jupitus

Is that like medieval text speak? They never put the whole thing in. They just sort of... C U l8er.

Alan Davies

We have been con-kered

Phill Jupitus

'We've invaded Britain. lol'

Stephen Fry

O … M … G! Very good.