Peter Ackroyd Quotes
None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.
Quotes to Explore
-
I had read Plato and Kant, but I had forgotten it.
-
Good comedy is ageless.
-
I hadn't learned to read by third grade, which wasn't unusual for some kids. I knew something was wrong because I couldn't see or understand the words the way the other kids did. I wasn't the least bit bothered - until I was sent back to the second-grade classroom for reading help after school.
-
When the simple word processors came in, writing became crisper, less dense - just because of the way we could instantly edit on the screen. Now the ability to mash up words and pictures and links and songs and tweets is what matters. I can't imagine what writing will be like in 2154.
-
I personally don't like to rehearse so much. I really sort of trust my instinct.
-
Retiring for good wasn't difficult. I knew at the time it was right. I was no longer capable of achieving the standards I'd set myself and there was no light at the end of the tunnel.
-
We are so Post-Modern that we don't realize how Post-Modern we are anymore.
-
All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one.
-
I always loved all kinds of music. I would watch musicals a lot as a kid, on TV, watch the Fred Astaire movies. I'd watch 'The Wizard of Oz.' I was a big Jerry Lewis fan, and they'd have these big bands and someone singing - some siren, or some guy singing some gorgeous song. I was always enamored of that style of music.
-
In 1995, I founded a storytelling program for children called Neighborhood Bridges in collaboration with the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis, which is 15 elementary schools in the Twin Cities.
-
We are not interested in cloning the Michael Jordans and the Michael Jacksons of this world. The rich and the famous don't participate in this.
-
I'm an entrepreneur, a businessman. I've got a lot of money, and that doesn't go very well with the whole 'starving artist in a garret' routine.
-
Writing is only the frosting on my cake. I'm whole without it.
-
Since the end of the Cold War, Soviet aggression had been replaced by a number of particularly venomous threats, from Timothy McVeigh to Osama bin Laden.
-
So being two different people in one day unnerved me to no end.
-
There are lines that I know are going to get a belly laugh, but after a few shows I get sick of hearing myself say them so I drop them.
-
Every generation is obsessed with the decade before they were born.
-
When the EPA says that property owners, farmers, and livestock producers must stomach higher costs, longer delays, and bigger headaches, it's up to Congress to put up a roadblock.
-
I need to have a quick wardrobe. Two or three blazers with dark gray pants, two pairs of jeans, two light blue shirts, a casual shirt, two pairs of shoes, one formal one not. Small accessories like Tod's Greca belt and our woven bracelets for a wild touch.
-
I see my career as not just music, but as hopefully an entertainer on all mediums, and someone who can have real influence and make great art.
-
When you go on book tour, you're always talking about yourself and your book from the time you get up in the morning until you go out at night. You, you. You get really sick of yourself.
-
As a European I had fit in almost seamlessly in New York for the last 25 years, but in Oklahoma I stood out like a sore thumb.
-
It is not possible to remake this country, to democratize it, humanize it, make it serious, as long as we have teenagers killing people for play and offending life, destroying the dream, and making love unviable. If education alone cannot transform society, without it society cannot change either.
-
None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.
