Peter Ackroyd · 185 pages
Rating: (462 votes)
“It is strange, is it not, how a person can adore one's soul so much that they adore one's body also?”
― Peter Ackroyd, quote from The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
“A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body. As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.”
― Peter Ackroyd, quote from The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
“Some drink to forget, I drink to remember. I drink in order to understand what I mean and to discover what I know. Under its benign influence all the stories and dramas which properly belong to the sphere of art are announced by me in conversation.”
― Peter Ackroyd, quote from The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
“absinthe removes the bitter taste of failure and grants me strange visions which are charming principally because they cannot be written down. Only in absinthe do I become entirely free and, when I drink it, I understand the symbolic mysteries of odour and of colour.”
― Peter Ackroyd, quote from The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
“One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines.”
― Peter Ackroyd, quote from The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
“But just as my philosophy had ceased to interest me as soon as it was formulated into a set of principles so, when I saw myself being imitated, I realised at once what an incubus my aesthetic personality might become if I were to be trapped within it. Imitation changes, not the impersonator, but the impersonated.”
― Peter Ackroyd, quote from The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
“I can recall quite clearly the journey from Omaha to San Francisco which I made with the opera troupe; God had created the world in less time than it took us to travel across America.”
― Peter Ackroyd, quote from The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
“the great advantage of really contemporary fiction is that one finds oneself mirror on every page”
― Peter Ackroyd, quote from The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
“the great advantage of really contemporary fiction is that one finds oneself mirrored on every page”
― Peter Ackroyd, quote from The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
Peter Ackroyd
Born place: in East Acton, London, The United Kingdom
Born date October 5, 1949
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“Creatures shall be seen on the earth who will always be fighting one another, with the greatest losses and frequent deaths on either side. There will be no bounds to their malice; by their strong limbs the vast forests of the world shall be laid low; and when they are filled with food they shall gratify their desires by dealing out death, affliction, labour, terror, and banishment to every living thing; and then from their boundless pride they will desire to rise towards heaven, but the excessive weight of their limbs will hold them down. Nothing shall remain on the earth or under the earth or in the waters that shall not be pursued, disturbed, or spoiled, and that which is in one country removed into another. And their bodies shall be made the tomb and the means of transit of all the living bodies they have slain.
O earth, why do you not open and hurl them into the deep fissures of thy vast abysses and caverns, and no longer display in the sight of heaven so cruel and horrible a monster?”
― Leonardo da Vinci, quote from Leonardo's Notebooks
“Needs? I guess that is what bothers so many folks. They keep expanding their needs until they are dependent on too many things and too many other people... I wonder how many things in the average American home could be eliminated if the question were asked, "Must I really have this?" I guess most of the extras are chalked up to comfort or saving time.
Funny thing about comfort - one man's comfort is another man's misery. Most people do't work hard enough physically anymore, and comfort is not easy to find. It is surprising how comfortable a hard bunk can be after you come down off a mountain.”
― quote from One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey
“It was as dark as the inside of a cabinet minister.”
― Joyce Cary, quote from The Horse's Mouth
“Many people are partial to the notion that . . . all writers are somehow mere vessels for Truth and Beauty when they compose. That we are not really in control. This is a variation on that twee little fable that writers like to pass off on gullible readers, that a character can develop a will of his own and 'take over a book.' This makes writing sound supernatural and mysterious, like possession by faeries. The reality tends to involve a spare room, a pirated copy of MS Word, and a table bought on sale at Target. A character can no more take over your novel than an eggplant and a jar of cumin can take over your kitchen.”
― Paul Collins, quote from Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books
“Ay, cómo trabajaban las chicas entonces; antes del amanecer ya estaban en pie, muertas de sueño, para disponer veinte o treinta fuegos. Barrer, fregar, limpiar y pulir se hacía sólo para volver a hacerlo. Lavar montañas de vajilla y cubertería, corretear escaleras arriba y abajo; y aquellas campanillas irascibles que empezaban a resonar como en una rabieta… Justo cuando lograbas sentarte un instante.”
― Laurie Lee, quote from Cider With Rosie
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