Stephen Fry

Well, this is just a bit here.

because of our neuroscience podcast, John.

You might enjoy this.

He says, I said in Dorian Gray that the great sins of the world take place in the brain, but it is in the brain that everything takes place.

We now know that we do not see with the eyes or hear with the ears.

They are really channels for the transmission, adequate or inadequate, of sense impressions.

It is the brain.

It is in the brain that the poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings.

It's amazing.

I quote this a lot when, you know, talking at schools and things like that.

And it's as true as it ever was.

As regards the other subject, the relation of the artistic life to conduct, it will no doubt seem strange to you that I should select it.

People point to Reading Jail and say that is where the artistic life leads a man.

Well, it might lead to worse places.

The more mechanical people, to whom life is a shrewd speculation depending on a careful calculation of ways and means, always know where they are going and go there.

They start with the ideal desire of being the parish beadle and in whatever sphere they are placed they succeed in being the parish beadle and no more.

A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of parliament or a successful grocer or a prominent solicitor or a judge or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be.

That is his punishment.

Those who want a mask have to wear it.

But with the dynamic forces of life and those in whom those dynamic forces become incarnate, it's different.