Christopher Priest > Quotes

“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige".”
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige

“10th October 1877

I am in love! Her name is Drusilla MacAvoy.

15th October 1877

Too hasty by far! The MacAvoy woman was not for me. I am planning to kill myself, and if the remainder of these pages are blank anyone who comes across this diary will know I succeeded.”
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige

“The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you wont find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled.”
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige

“Magicians protect their secrets not because the secrets are large and important, but because they are so small and trivial. The wonderful effects created on stage are often the result of a secret so absurd that the magician would be embarrassed to admit that that was how it was done.”
― Christopher Priest

“An illusion has three stages.

"First there is the setup, in which the nature of what might be attempted at is hinted at, or suggested, or explained. The apparatus is seen. volunteers from the audience sometimes participate in preparation. As the trick is being setup, the magician will make use of every possible use of misdirection.

"The performance is where the magician's lifetime of practice, and his innate skill as a performer, cojoin to produce the magical display.

"The third stage is sometimes called the effect, or the prestige, and this is the product of magic. If a rabbit is pulled from a hat, the rabbit, which apparently did not exist before the trick was performed, can be said to be the prestige of that trick.”
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige

“10th October 1877 I am in love! Her name is Drusilla MacAvoy. 15th October 1877 Too hasty by far! The MacAvoy woman was not for me. I am planning to kill myself, and if the remainder of these pages are blank anyone who comes across this diary will know I succeeded.”
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige

“Now you’re looking for the secret, but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled.”
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige

“None of it is real, though, because reality lies in a different, more evanescent realm. These are only the names of some of the places in the archipelago of dreams. The true reality is the one you perceive around you, or that which you are fortunate enough to imagine for yourself.”
― Christopher Priest, The Islanders

“In the expression of grief lies recovery from grief itself.”
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige

“I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles.”
― Christopher Priest, The Inverted World

“I had imagined myself into existence. I wrote because of an inner need,and that need was to create a clearer vision of myself, and in writing I became what I wrote.”
― Christopher Priest, The Affirmation

“Whatever else you may think, this place is not the centre of the universe.”
“It is,” he said. “Because if we ever stopped believing that, we would all die.”
― Christopher Priest, The Inverted World

“...an incomplete listing of anything reveals that a selection has been made, and any act of selection is of course political.”
― Christopher Priest, The Islanders

“A good idea is a good idea and my work should compete on its own merits, not based on the size of my fan base.”
― Christopher Priest

“As we grow we do not see ourselves changing – there is the apparent continuity of the mirror, the daily awareness of immediate past – and it takes the reminders of old photographs or old friends to point out the differences.”
― Christopher Priest, The Affirmation

“The dream-state of the Archipelago, which is what we islanders most respond to, and least wish to see changed, seems likely to continue without interference for a long time to come.”
― Christopher Priest, The Islanders

“This is the treasure my lifestyle has earned me.
Millions in the bank but an empty soul.”
― Christopher Priest, Deathstroke #22

“The true reality is the one you perceive around you, or that which you are fortunate enough to imagine for yourself.”
― Christopher Priest, The Islanders

“I planned to waste away and die, but there is a spirit of life, even in one such as myself, that stands in the way of such decisions. I thought that if I did not eat and drink then death would simply follow, but in practice I found that thirst becomes such a frantic obsession that it takes a greater resolve than mine to resist it. Every time I took a few drops to slake it, I postponed my demise a little more. The same was true with food. Hunger is a monster. After a while I came to an accommodation with this and stayed alive, a pathetic denizen of a half-world that was as much of my own making as it had been of Borden’s, or so I came to believe. I went through the winter in this miserable state, a failure even at self-destruction.”
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige

“When once before I wished myself dead, the wish was not strong enough. I can make myself die only by convincing myself that there is also a hope I shall not succeed.”
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige

“In the expression of grief lies recovery from grief itself. Nor”
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige

“Civilization on Earth planet was equated with selfishness and greed; those people who lived in a civilized state exploited those who did not. There were shortages of vital commodities on Earth planet, and the people in the civilized nations were able to monopolize those commodities by reason of their greater economic strength. This imbalance appeared to be at the root of the
disputes.”
― Christopher Priest, The Inverted World

“To aspire to life forever would be to acquire living at the expense of life.”
― Christopher Priest, The Islanders

“The fear of dying is not just the terror of pain, the humiliation of the loss of faculties, the fall into the abyss . . . but the primeval fear that afterwards one might remember it. The”
― Christopher Priest, The Affirmation

“...words are only as valid as the mind that chooses them, so that of essence all prose is a form of deception.”
― Christopher Priest, The Affirmation

“Bet visada atsiranda vienas ar du, kurie išsineša paslaptį ir kamuojasi dėl jos taip niekada ir nepriartėdami prie jos išsiaiškinimo.”
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige

“Less welcome to the people of Paneron is the STIFLER, a humid wind that brings the allergenic pollen of carp-weed bushes from nearby unpopulated islands.”
― Christopher Priest, The Islanders

“10th October 1877
I am in love! Her name is Drusilla MacAvoy.

15th October 1877
Too hasty by far! The MacAvoy woman was not for me. I am planning to kill myself, and if the remainder of these pages are blank anyone who comes across this diary will know I succeeded.

Rupert Angier (Pg. 166)”
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige

“He spent most of the break periods pressing himself against the school fence, staring out at the runway, learning a lifelong lesson as he did so, that preoccupation could be an effective defence against the brutalities of the outside world.”
― Christopher Priest, Airside

“Life could only be lived to the full by the instinctive or unconscious denial of death, otherwise nothing would ever be achieved”
― Christopher Priest, The Islanders