Peter Ackroyd Quotes
I detest self-regard. If my work has taught me anything, it is that self-aggrandisement is completely unhistorical.
Quotes to Explore
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I'm optimistic about people and about the planet and about nature. I think it's resilient, like people are.
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I try to talk about policy issues intelligently, I try very hard to avoid thought bubbles. I make sure my speeches are well researched and footnoted. I make sure I am not talking through my hat.
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When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't.
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Though teenagers are generally very interested in sports, they must realise that education is the most important thing in their lives. They must find the right balance.
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I've found a letter that was written to me from a girl who was getting married. And she wanted to know the secret of a happy marriage. I said - and I wrote back and said something to the effect that I couldn't - I had no magic formula. And I never sat down and thought about it, but everything just fell into place with Ronnie and me.
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A man will turn over half a library to make one book.
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Our best thoughts come from others.
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I grew up outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in a little town, and went to a regular high school. I was a... very average student in that high school. Then I joined the Navy, and while I was in the Navy, I was in a motorcycle accident and woke up deaf in a hospital.
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Your mind is what makes everything else work.
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The essence of science is independent thinking, hard work, and not equipment. When I got my Nobel Prize, I had spent hardly 200 rupees on my equipment.
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The lack of a consistent policy from major economies is the main source of volatility.
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Whenever you're in a relationship, you have that favorite song that reminds you of when you first got together or when you first kissed, and then every time you hear that song, it reminds you of that person.
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I knew that I wanted to be an actor; how to go about it was the question. I went to Australia for my studies; from there I told my dad that I also want to do a course in performing arts, but my father refused. So I completed my studies and came back. But I kept poking him, saying that acting is something that I want to do.
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Americans resident in China inform us that the ballot box in their country is greatly abused for personal ends, and Chinese admirers of the American Republic have not minutely examined its defects.
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I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think is finished work.
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We must exchange the philosophy of excuse - what I am is beyond my control for the philosophy of responsibility.
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Well, you know, I - again, even in the context of BP, I wonder about this government's priorities. The federal government's top priority right now should be the cleanup. And BP certainly has done so many things wrong. They need to be held to account.
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Brooklyn's good. Brooklyn's funky. Brooklyn's happening.
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There is something addictive in space that makes you want to go back - like the mountain climbers who want to go back to the Himalayas although their fingers were cut by frostbite.
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In abortion they are trying to destroy the last bastion of the image of God.
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I strongly believe being mayor is the public post in which you have the greatest opportunity to change peoples' lives for the better. People live in cities, not states or nations. As a mayor, you are connected directly to citizens.
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The beauty of voice-over work is that maybe you come in and record once every two weeks for a couple of hours and do a couple episodes a session. It's awesome! You spend an afternoon playing in the booth, and there you have it. It doesn't interfere with much.
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Acquiring a repertoire in these days, when the vocal literature is so immense, so overwhelming, that the student with sense will devote all his energies to work and not imagine himself a martyr to art.
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I detest self-regard. If my work has taught me anything, it is that self-aggrandisement is completely unhistorical.
