Peter Ackroyd Quotes

And when I was young, did I ever tell you, I always wanted to get inside
a book and never come out again? I loved reading so much I wanted
to be a part of it, and there were some books I could have stayed in
for ever.

— Peter Ackroyd

“The world is a sea in which we all must surely drown.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“For when I trace back the years I have liv'd, gathering them up in my Memory, I see what a chequer'd Work Of Nature my life has been. If I were now to inscribe my own History with its unparalleled Sufferings and surprizing Adventures (as the Booksellers might indite it), I know that the great Part of the World would not believe the Passages there related, by reason of the Strangeness of them, but I cannot help their Unbelief; and if the Reader considers them to be but dark Conceits, then let him bethink himself that Humane life is quite out of the Light and that we are all Creatures of Darknesse.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“Under the force of the imagination, nature itself is changed.”

— Peter Ackroyd

Bigotry does not consort easily with free trade.

— Peter Ackroyd

“Is Dust immortal then, I ask'd him, so that we may see it blowing through the Centuries? But as Walter gave no Answer I jested with him further to break his Melancholy humour: What is Dust, Master Pyne?
And he reflected a little: It is particles of Matter, no doubt.
Then we are all Dust indeed, are we not?
And in a feigned Voice he murmered, For Dust thou art and shalt to Dust return. Then he made a Sour face, but only yo laugh the more.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“There is a camaraderie that grows up among those who work with old books and old papers, largely, I suspect, because we understand that we are at odds with the rest of the world: we are travelling backwards, while all those around us are still moving forward.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“He found it difficult to discuss any of his activities, which seemed to him no more than the hole through which he was falling.”

— Peter Ackroyd

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

— Peter Ackroyd

“London goes beyond any boundary or convention.It contains every wish or word ever spoken, every action or gesture ever made, every harsh or noble statement ever expressed. It is illimitable. It is Infinite London.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“There was no grandeur here, no sublimity, only weariness and gloom.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“Then as we passed down this Passage we were knocked against certain Women of the Town, who gave us Eye-language, since there were many Corners and Closets in Bedlam where they would stop and wait for Custom: indeed it was known as a sure Market for Lechers and Loiterers, for tho' they came in Single they went out by Pairs. This is a Showing-room for Whores, I said.
And what better place for Lust, Sir Chris. replied, than among those whose Wits have fled?”

— Peter Ackroyd

“The house of the Plantagenets, from Henry II to Richard III himself, was brimming with blood. In their lust for power the members of the family turned upon one another. King John murdered, or caused to be murdered, his nephew Arthur; Richard II despatched his uncle, Thomas of Gloucester; Richard II was in turn killed on the orders of his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke; Henry VI was killed in the Tower on the orders of his cousin, Edward IV; Edward IV murdered his brother, Clarence, just as his own two sons were murdered by their uncle. It is hard to imagine a family more steeped in slaughter and revenge, of which the Wars of the Roses were only one effusion. It might be thought that some curse had been laid upon the house of the Plantagenets, except of course that in the world of kings the palm of victory always goes to the most violent and the most ruthless. It could be said that the royal family was the begetter of organized crime.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“As the Houses tumbled upon the Streets with a great roaring Noise, they cryed out We are undone! We are great Sinners! and the like: and yet as soon as the Danger was passed, they came back with their:
Hey ho the Devil is Dead!
Eat, drink, and go merry to Bed!
Thus the Sick confesse to their Contagion only when they are like to Die of it, even tho' they carry their Death with them every where.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“You say that it is time to shake off the Mist, but Mankind walks in a Mist; that Reason which you cry up as the Glory of this Age is a Proteus and Cameleon that changes its Shape almost in every Man: there is no Folly that may not have a thousand Reasons produc'd to advance it into the Class of Wisdom. Reason itself is a Mist.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“Time. In another time. Either before or after. They were not stars,
but fires. They were the souls of birds. They were entries into the
vast fire. They were the eyes of the dead. And in the darkness they
were imprisoned by them.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“Lonely and isolated people who feel their solitude more intensely within the busy life of the streets. They are what George Gissing called the anchorites of daily life, who return unhappy to their solitary rooms.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“Insecurity of the spirit demands completeness elsewhere.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“That Figure so impressd it self upon my Mind that I have been in a manner walking towards it all my Life. Then I peered into Wendel Dietterlin his Architectura, and there were unveiled to me the several Orders: of the Tuscan, which is now mine own, I was then mov'd by its Strangeness and Awefulness; the obscured Shapes, the Shaddowes and the massie Openings so in-chanted my Spirit that when looking on them I imagined my self to be lock'd in some dark and Enclosed space. The heavinesse of Stone did so oppress me that I was close to Extinction, and I fancied that I could see in the Engraver's lines the sides of Demons, crumbled Walls, and half-humane Creatures rising from the Dust. There was some thing that waited for me there, already in Ruines.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“I asked him what he said, for there was such a mish-mash of Conversation around us that I could scarcely understand him - the frequenters of Taverns have Hearts of Curd and Souls of Milk Sop, but they have Mouths like Cannons which stink of Tobacco and their own foul Breath as they cry What News? What's a Clock? Methinks it's Cold to Day! Thus is it a Hospital For Fools”

— Peter Ackroyd

“Never be curious. It is the path to perdition.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“It is characteristic of Dickens who, when he grasps the wrong end of the stick, never fails to belabour everyone in sight with it.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“Without thought he repeated some words which a boy had once chalked on the blackboard between lessons: 'A lump of coal is better than nothing. Nothing is better than God. Therefore a lump of coal is better than God'. And then he traced his own name with his finger on the cracked and broken floor.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“He had been living in the dark world of his anxieties, and no infliction of reality could seem more terrible than that”

— Peter Ackroyd

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

— Peter Ackroyd

Those in their snug Bed-chambers may call the Fears of Night meer Bugbears, but their Minds have not pierced into the Horror of the World which others, who are adrift upon it, know.

— Peter Ackroyd

It is a dreadfull thing to look down Praecipices.

— Peter Ackroyd

“For who can speak of the Mazes of the Serpent to those who are not lost in them?”

— Peter Ackroyd

“Worshipped was that of Mammon. It is difficult to estimate the size of monastic occupation. At the time it was believed that the clergy owned one third of the land, but it may be safe to presume that the monks controlled one sixth of English territory.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“The Gulphe in which truth lies is bottomless and it will wash over whatever is thrown into it.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“Truly Time is a vast Denful of Horrour, round about which a Serpent winds and in the winding bites itself by the Tail. Now, now is the Hour, every Hour, every part of an Hour, every Moment, which in its end does begin again and never ceases to end: a beginning continuing, always ending.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“It is the nature of humankind to idealize, to indulge in excessive praise as well as unjust condemnation.”

— Peter Ackroyd

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

— Peter Ackroyd

“I don't know if I have a voice of my own. I don't see me being an important person with something to say. I haven't. I've got nothing to say. My opinion is of no consequence or value.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“His head was boiled, impaled upon a pole and raised above London Bridge. So ended the life of Thomas More, one of the few Londoners upon whom sainthood has been conferred and the first English layman to be beatified as a martyr.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“It sometimes seems to me that the whole course of English history was one of accident, confusion, chance and unintended consequences - there's no real pattern.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“Rioting has always been a London tradition. It has been since the early Middle Ages. There's hardly a spate of years that goes by without violent rioting of one kind or another. They happen so frequently that they are almost part of London's texture.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“The English have always been greedy for news of times past, with that mixture of fatalism and melancholy which is part of the national character.”

— Peter Ackroyd

I have always believed that the material world is governed by nonmaterial sources, so that in that sense 'English Music' is an exercise in the spiritual as well as the material. I have always been attracted to the Gothic and spiritual imagination, and I've always been interested in visionaries.

— Peter Ackroyd

“Thomas More's birth was noted by his father upon a blank page at the back of a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth's 'Historia Regum Britanniae'; for a lawyer John More was remarkably inexact in his references to that natal year, and the date has been moved from 1477 to 1478 and back again.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“I enjoyed reading and learning at school, and at university I enjoyed extending my reading and learning. Once I left Cambridge, I went to Yale as a fellow. I spent two years there. After that, George Gale made me literary editor of 'The Spectator.'”

— Peter Ackroyd

“Oh, I just tend to believe in things when I'm writing them. For instance, when I was writing 'Doctor Dee,' I believed in magic. And when I wrote 'Hawksmoor' I believed in psychic geography. But as soon as I type the last full stop, I'm back to being a complete blank again.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“London has always provided the landscape for my imagination. It becomes a character - a living being - within each of my books.”

— Peter Ackroyd

I detest self-regard. If my work has taught me anything, it is that self-aggrandisement is completely unhistorical.

— Peter Ackroyd

People are much more interesting than people realise.

— Peter Ackroyd

“'London' is a gallery of sensation of impressions. It is a history of London in a thematic rather than a chronological sense with chapters of the history of smells, the history of silence, and the history of light. I have described the book as a labyrinth, and in that sense in complements my description of London itself.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“When I was a child I wanted to be Pope. My greatest disappointment is missing out on that. I also wanted to be a tap dancer but I never fulfilled that ambition either.”

— Peter Ackroyd

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.

— Peter Ackroyd

“My great fear has always been complete and utter failure. Hence, you see, all the dispossessed people in my fiction, and why I try to earn as much money as I can. It's a defense. I don't enjoy it or do anything with it.”

— Peter Ackroyd