the hippopotamus

you can't expect an arse like me to tell a story competently. It's all I can bloody do to work this foul machine. I've counted up the words processed, a thing I do every hour, and, if technology can be trusted, it looks as if you're in for 94 536 of them. Good luck to you. You asked for it, you paid me for it, you've got to sit through it. As the man said, I've suffered for my art, now it's your turn.
I don't claim that it has been a wholly grotesque experience. The Project, as you insist on calling it, has kept me.from drinking at lunch-time, from drooling after unattainable women and from quarreling with the unspeakables next door. At your suggestion, I have been leading a more or less regular life these seven months and I am told the benefits can be read clearly in complection, waistline and eye-whites.

Foreword to The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry.

Очень мне нравится язык Фрая, довольно выпукло передающий характер героев. Интересно, что с ним сделали в русском переводе? Никто не читал Теннисные мячики небес? В оригинале - очень приятственное чтение.