Peter Ackroyd Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• People are much more interesting than people realise.

  Peter Ackroyd

  People, Interesting, Realising

  5 Copy quote

• I believe that the gods themselves are frightened of the world which they have fashioned.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Believe, World, I Believe

  "The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde". Book by Peter Ackroyd, 1983.

  8 Copy quote

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

  Peter Ackroyd

  Book, Long, Chapters

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Drama, Law, Games

  4 Copy quote

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

  Peter Ackroyd

  Philosophy, Reading, Remember

  "London calling" by John O'Mahony, www.theguardian.com. July 02, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Real, English History, Confusion

  "Peter Ackroyd: 'I just want to tell a story'" by Euan Ferguson, www.theguardian.com. August 25, 2011.

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Father, Years, Pages

  7 Copy quote

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

  Peter Ackroyd

  Book, Character, Imagination

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

• And the smell of the library was always the same - the musty odour of old clothes mixed with the keener scent of unwashed bodies, creating what the chief librarian had once described as 'the steam of the social soup.'

  Peter Ackroyd

  Smell, Clothes, Creating

  1987 Chatterton, ch.5.

  6 Copy quote

• There are two types of people, you see. One type keep their heads straight, and look around as they walk. The others look up - at the tops of houses, at the eaves and the lintels and the roofs, which can tell you when they were built - and I've always done that.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Two, People, House

  4 Copy quote

• No poet is ever completely lost. He has the secret of his childhood safe with him, like some secret cave in which he can kneel. And, when we read his poetry, we can join him there.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Childhood, Secret, Caves

  1987 Chatterton, ch.10.

  4 Copy quote

• The English can laugh and at the same time strike you down, without the least compunction. It is the secret of their success as a nation.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Laughing, Secret, Strikes

  "The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde". Book by Peter Ackroyd, 1983.

  53 Copy quote

• In London, I've always lived within 10 miles of where I was born. You see, there is something called a spirit of place, and my place happens to be London, at least once a fortnight.

  Peter Ackroyd

  London, Spirit, Born

  4 Copy quote

• I strike up conversations all the time and it is very interesting, finding out about things I know nothing about.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Interesting, Conversation, Strikes

  4 Copy quote

• I think biography can be more personal than fiction, and certainly can be more expressive.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Thinking, Fiction, Biographies

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Play, Historical, Doubt

  4 Copy quote

• I had to paraphrase the paraphrase.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Paraphrase

  4 Copy quote

• There are so many characters whizzing around inside my head, it's like Looney Tunes. But as soon as I've finished writing about them, I completely forget who they are.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Character, Writing, Tunes

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Believe, Writing, Psychics

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Voice, Important, Opinion

  "Tales of the city" by Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. August 11, 2003.

  4 Copy quote

• I just wanted to be an ordinary, middle-class person. When I was at Cambridge I made great efforts to lose the last remnants of my cockney accent.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Class, Effort, Ordinary

  "Tales of the city". Interview with Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. August 11, 2003.

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  Soul, Body, Strange

  4 Copy quote

• Bigotry does not consort easily with free trade.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Doe, Trade, Free Trade

  5 Copy quote

• Why should a novelist not also be a historian? To force unnatural divisions within the English language is to work against its capacious and accommodating nature. To expect a writer to produce only novels, or only histories, is equivalent to demanding from a composer that he or she write only string quartets or piano sonatas.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Writing, Piano, Novelists

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Character, Past, News

  5 Copy quote

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