Peter Ackroyd Quotes

And now we come to the Heart of our Designe: the art of Shaddowes you must know well, Walter, and yo...

What is the sweetness of flowers compared to the savour of dust and confinement?

London has always provided the landscape for my imagination. It becomes a character - a living being...

There were pools of light among the stacks, directly beneath the bulbs which Philip had switched on,...

It sometimes seems to me that the whole course of English history was one of accident, confusion, ch...

The gateway to the underworld is seen as part antiquity and part theatre. Welcome to the lower depth...

My great fear has always been complete and utter failure. Hence, you see, all the dispossessed peopl...

It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the inte...

I have always believed that the material world is governed by nonmaterial sources, so that in that s...

The English seem to relish unsystematic learning of this kind, in the same manner that they embarked...

You say that it is time to shake off the Mist, but Mankind walks in a Mist; that Reason which you cr...

The embrace of present and past time, in which English antiquarianism becomes a form of alchemy, eng...

A letter from a French cleric to Nicholas of St. Albans, written c. 1178, rehearsed what was already...

It is the kind of stoicism which had been seen as characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry, perhaps nowh...

So we may use our books to form a barricade against the world,interweaving their words with our own ...

So do we discover, in the world, that our worst fears are unfulfilled; yet we must fear, in order th...

And when I was young, did I ever tell you, I always wanted to get insidea book and never come out ag...

History is about longing and belonging. It is about the need for permanence and the perception of co...

None of these apparent sightings interested Hawksmoor, since it was quite usual for members of the p...

I have liv'd long enough for others, like the Dog in the Wheel, and it is now the Season to begin fo...

DYER. No, I am not of your Mind, for the Dialogue was fitted up with too much Facility. Words must b...

I have had so many Dwellings, Nat, that I know these Streets as well as a strowling Beggar: I was bo...

A woman is a deep Ditch, said he, her House inclines to Death and her Paths unto the Devil

Destruction is like a snow-ball rolled down a Hill, for its Bulk encreases by its own swiftness and ...

Now his work-mates pitied him, although they tried not to show it, and it was generally arranged tha...

I am in the Pitte, but I have gone so deep that I can see the brightness of the Starres at Noon

It's difficult to know where to begin, sir.''Yes, the beginning is the tricky part. But perhaps ther...

This mundus tenebrosus, this shaddowy world of Mankind, is sunk into Night; there is not a Field wit...

Is Dust immortal then, I ask'd him, so that we may see it blowing through the Centuries? But as Walt...

This mundus tenebrosus, this shaddowy world of Mankind, is sunk into Night; there is not a Field wit...

It is one of the greatest Curses visited upon Mankind, he told me, that they shall fear where no Fea...

On his thirteenth birthday he had seen a film in which the central character was a painter who, unab...

I would have no need for the Memory Of Things past if those which were Present were more agreeable

Hawksmoor had often noticed how, in the moments when he first carne upon a corpse, all the objects a...

Generally he knew by instinct the likely length of an investigation, but on this occasion he did not...

It has often been said that the more unusual the murder the easier it is to solve, but this is a the...

Then as we passed down this Passage we were knocked against certain Women of the Town, who gave us E...

The people had once created the city. The city now created the people, or, more exactly, the people ...

To be insular is to be independent. But it is also to be alone.

Insecurity of the spirit demands completeness elsewhere.

He is a Londoner, too, in his writings. In his familiar letters he displays a rambling urban vivacit...

I am the scourge of God

Some drink to forget, I drink to remember. I drink in order to understand what I mean and to discove...

the great advantage of really contemporary fiction is that one finds oneself mirrored on every page

the great advantage of really contemporary fiction is that one finds oneself mirror on every page

But just as my philosophy had ceased to interest me as soon as it was formulated into a set of princ...

One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines.

absinthe removes the bitter taste of failure and grants me strange visions which are charming princi...

There is a camaraderie that grows up among those who work with old books and old papers, largely, I ...

Books do not per­ish like hu­mankind. Of course we com­mon­ly see them bro­ken in the hab­er­dash­er...

Women, of their nature, crave for liberty; they will not be ordered around like servants.

And when the Duke of Alva ordered three hundred Citizens to be put to Death together at Antwerp, a L...

And I was a Child again, watching the bright World. But the Spell broke when at this Juncture some G...

He was clearly not the murderer whom Hawksmoor was seeking, but it was generally the innocent who co...

Those in their snug Bed-chambers may call the Fears of Night meer Bugbears, but their Minds have not...

Truly Time is a vast Denful of Horrour, round about which a Serpent winds and in the winding bites i...

His terror became his companion. When it seemed to diminish, or grow easier to bear, he forced himse...

So now I lye by Day and toss or rave by Night, since the ratling and perpetual Hum of the Town deny ...

She went downstairs slowly and sat in front of the fire, rocking herself to and fro as she imagined ...

...but there were four things I taught Walter to consider: 1) That it was Cain who built the first C...

He was walking around in circles, the smell of the old furniture suddenly very distinct. There was a...

Then he took the pages, smoothed them with the palm of his hand, and fixed them with pins to the wal...

His body had become a companion which seemed always about to leave him: it had its own pains which m...

DYER. (Sits down) There was nothing that I recall save that the Sunne was a Round flat shining Disc ...

Be informed, also, that this good and savoury Parish is the home of Hectors, Trapanners, Biters who ...

I have long been of the Opinion, says he, that the Fire was a vast Blessing and the Plague likewise;...

We went back into the Mens Apartments where there were others raving of Ships that may fly and silve...

For when I trace back the years I have liv'd, gathering them up in my Memory, I see what a chequer'd...