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, First Light

“The world is a sea in which we all must surely drown.”
― Peter Ackroyd, English Music

“I have liv'd long enough for others, like the Dog in the Wheel, and it is now the Season to begin for myself: I cannot change that Thing call'd Time, but I can alter its Posture and, as Boys do turn a looking-glass against the Sunne, so I will dazzle you all.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor

“Under the force of the imagination, nature itself is changed.”
― Peter Ackroyd, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

“The best years are when you know what you're doing.”
― Peter Ackroyd, English Music

“The ordinary routines of life are never chronicled by the historian, but they make up almost the whole of experience.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors

“There is no humiliation worse than the consciousness of a wasted
life. It stains the spirit, forestalls hope, and destroys any motive for
action or change.”
― Peter Ackroyd, English Music

“He stood beneath the white tower, and looked up at it with that mournful expression which his face always carried in repose: for one moment he thought of climbing up its cracked and broken stone, and then from its summit screaming down at the silent city as a child might scream at a chained animal.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor

“Sometimes the silences, the gaps, tell us more than
anything else.”
― Peter Ackroyd, First Light

“The endless chatter of this journey had wearied me.”
― Peter Ackroyd, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

“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, Hawksmoor

“I lack the World, for I move like a Ghost through it.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor

“To be insular is to be independent. But it is also to be alone.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Venice: Pure City

“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, Hawksmoor

“Bigotry does not consort easily with free trade.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Venice: Pure City

“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, London

“It is strange, is it not, how a person can adore one's soul so much that they adore one's body also?”
― Peter Ackroyd, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde

“…a lie, once uttered, changes reality just as surely as if it were a great truth.”
― Peter Ackroyd, English Music

“I am the scourge of God”
― Peter Ackroyd, The Trial of Elizabeth Cree

“Destruction is like a snow-ball rolled down a Hill, for its Bulk encreases by its own swiftness and thus Disorder spreads.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor

“I realized that my time in this place had come to an end; now that my schooldays
were over, I no longer belonged here. I had always been a stranger and, if I
stayed, I would become a stranger to myself as well.”
― Peter Ackroyd, English Music

“...for who can speak of the Mazes of the Serpent to those who are not lost in them?”
― Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor

“His body had become a companion which seemed always about to leave him: it had its own pains which moved him to pity, and its own particular movements which he tried hard to follow. He had learned from it how to keep his eyes down on the road, so that he could see no one, and how important it was never to look back - although there were times when memories of an earlier life filled him with grief and he lay face down upon the grass until the sweet rank odour of the earth brought him to his senses. But slowly he forgot where it was he had come from, and what it was he was escaping.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor

“There were pools of light among the stacks, directly beneath the bulbs which Philip had switched on, but it was now with an unexpected fearfulness that he saw how the books stretched away into the darkness. They seemed to expand as soon as they reached the shadows, creating some dark world where there was no beginning and no end, no story, no meaning. And if you crossed the threshold into that world, you would be surrounded by words; you would crush them beneath your feet, you would knock against them with your head and arms, but if you tried to grasp them they would melt away. Philip did not dare turn his back upon these books. Not yet. It was almost, he thought, as if they had been speaking to each other while he slept.”
― Peter Ackroyd

“The value is always in the eye of the beholder. What is worthless to one person may be very important to someone else.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Chatterton

“I was at peace with a world which afforded so much bounty, and began to enjoy living at the very end of time.”
― Peter Ackroyd, The House of Doctor Dee

“It is the kind of stoicism which had been seen as characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry, perhaps nowhere better expressed than in 'The Battle of Maldon' where the most famous Saxon or English cry has been rendered - 'Courage must be the firmer, heart the bolder, spirit must be the greater, as our strength grows less'. That combination of bravery and fatalism, endurance and understatement, is the defining mood of Arhurian legend.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination

“I would have no need for the Memory Of Things past if those which were Present were more agreeable”
― Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor

“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, English Music

“A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body. As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.”
― Peter Ackroyd, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde