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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“I nodded and grasped the woman by the arm; the cataphracts released her and turned away like silver automata.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from Shadow and Claw
“It seems to me that we generally do not have a correct measure of our own wisdom.”
― R.K. Narayan, quote from The Guide
“It is time for you to choose, the rope or the spike!”
― Damian Wampler, quote from Sevara: Dawn of Hope
“Soundings must be made at all three mounds. We make a start with Tell Mozan. There is a village there, and with Hamoudi as ambassador we try and obtain workmen. The men are doubtful and suspicious.
"We do not need money," they say. "It has been a good harvest."
For this is a simple, and, I think, consequently a happy part of the world. Food is the only consideration. If the harvest is good, you are rich. For the rest of the year there is leisure and plenty, until the time comes to plough and sow once more.
"A little extra money," says Hamoudi, like the serpent of Eden, "is always welcome."
They answer simply: "But what can we buy with it? We have enough food until the harvest comes again."
And here, alas! the eternal Eve plays her part. Astute Hamoudi baits his hook. They can buy ornaments for their wives.
The wives nod their heads. This digging, they say, is a good thing!
Reluctantly the men consider the idea. ...”
― quote from Come, Tell Me How You Live
“The truth is, the abyss lives in us. In our greed. In the way we look at things different to us, and see things lesser. In the way we see the smaller, or the weaker, and think them prey.
It begins with the beasts of the land, the birds of the sky. And in a blinking, we find ourselves seeing our lessers in people with different colored skins. Different gods. Different creeds. We see them as lessers, and we hurt, and we kill, and we think nothing of it. Because they are different, we think ourselves just. Because we are stronger, we think ourselves righteous.
That is the abyss in all of us. And we stand close to the edge still. Closer than any can dream. We need but stray for a moment and we will find ourselves back again, staring down into that black. And who will save us? When everything that was different to us is already gone?”
― Jay Kristoff, quote from Endsinger
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