Peter Ackroyd

“All cities are impressive in their way, because they represent the aspiration of men to lead a common life; those people who wish to live agreeable lives, and in constant intercourse with one another, will build a city as beautiful as Paris.”

“In so far as I have any beliefs, I suppose I'm like that old Peggy Lee song, 'Is That All There Is?' I want to believe there's something else going on, but what that something else is I don't pretend to know.”

“Familial love can find an echo in our own hearts just as it did in that of Charles Dickens.”

“There are certain people who seem doomed to buy certain houses. The house expects them. It waits for them.”

“Books do not per­ish like hu­mankind. Of course we com­mon­ly see them bro­ken in the hab­er­dash­er's shop when on­ly a few months be­fore they lay bound on the sta­tion­er's stall; these are not true works, but mere trash and new­fan­gle­ness for the vul­gar. There are thou­sands of such gew­gaws and toys which peo­ple have in their cham­bers, or which they keep up­on their shelves, be­liev­ing that they are pre­cious things, when they are the mere pass­ing fol­lies of the pass­ing time and of no more val­ue than pa­pers gath­ered up from some dunghill or raked by chance out of the ken­nel. True books are filled with the pow­er of the un­der­stand­ing which is the in­her­itance of the ages: you may take up a book in time, but you read it in eter­ni­ty.”

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

“In 'The Plato Papers' I wanted to get another perspective on the present moment by extrapolating into the distant future. So in that sense, there's a definite similarity of purpose between a book set in the future and a book set in the past.”

“I love soap operas - the stories, the plots! And I love the game shows and the courtroom dramas and the detectives - Jessica Fletcher, 'Columbo,' 'Perry Mason,' 'L.A. Law.' Any sense of guilt appeals to me in a television program - a sense of guilt, or a sense of making a lot of money.”

“To be a writer was always my greatest aim. I remember writing a play about Guy Fawkes when I was 10. I suppose it's significant, at least to me, that my first work should be about a historical figure.”

“A letter from a French cleric to Nicholas of St. Albans, written c. 1178, rehearsed what was already a familiar perception: Your island is surrounded by water, and not unnaturally its inhabitants are affected by the nature of the element in which they live. Unsubstantial fantasies slide easily into their minds. They think their dreams to be visions, and their visions to be divine. We cannot blame them, for such is the nature of their land. I have often noticed that the English are greater dreams than the French.”

“The 16th-century theatre witnessed the particularly English manifestation of 'the history play.' There can be no doubt that Shakespeare's presentations of 'Henry V' and 'Richard III' have been incalculably more influential than any more sober historical study.”

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

“History is about longing and belonging. It is about the need for permanence and the perception of continuity. It concerns the atavistic desire to find deep sources of identity. We live again in the twelfth or in the fifteenth century, finding echoes and resonances of our own time; we may recognise that some things, such as piety and passion, are never lost; we may also conclude that the great general drama of the human spirit is ever fresh and ever renewed. That is why some of the greatest writers have preferred to see English history as dramatic or epic poetry, which is just as capable of expressing the power and movement of history as any prose narrative; it is a form of singing around a fire.”

“But just as my philosophy had ceased to interest me as soon as it was formulated into a set of principles so, when I saw myself being imitated, I realised at once what an incubus my aesthetic personality might become if I were to be trapped within it. Imitation changes, not the impersonator, but the impersonated.”

“Health, money. That's what people worried about in the 14th century as much as today. I find it so much more interesting than the supposed activities of kings, queens, generals.”

“This mundus tenebrosus, this shaddowy world of Mankind, is sunk into Night; there is not a Field without its Spirits, nor a City without its Daemons, and the Lunaticks speak Prophesies while the Wise men fall into the Pitte.”

“DYER. No, I am not of your Mind, for the Dialogue was fitted up with too much Facility. Words must be pluckt from Obscurity and nourished with Care, improved with Art and corrected with Application. Labour and Time are the Instruments in the perfection of all Work.”

“I can remember picking up weighty tomes on the history of science and the history of philosophy and reading those when I was small.”

“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.”

“Some drink to forget, I drink to remember. I drink in order to understand what I mean and to discover what I know. Under its benign influence all the stories and dramas which properly belong to the sphere of art are announced by me in conversation.”