Peter Ackroyd Quotes
67 quotes
in 1088 categories
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I detest self-regard. If my work has taught me anything, it is that self-aggrandisement is completely unhistorical.
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I don't believe necessarily the past is in the past. It's eternal, it's all around us.
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I don't in any sense think of myself as a celebrity, which of course I'm not.
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I never read in bed, only in my study.
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I saw a ghost once, about 20 years ago. It took the form of someone coming out of a sleeping body and sitting at the…
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I strike up conversations all the time and it is very interesting, finding out about things I know nothing about.
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If I did only one thing at a time I'd think I was wasting my time. If, for example, I only wrote novels I would…
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London has always provided the landscape for my imagination. It becomes a character - a living being - within each of my books.
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People are much more interesting than people realise.
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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.
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There are certain people who seem doomed to buy certain houses. The house expects them. It waits for them.
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To watch King Lear is to approach the recognition that there is indeed no meaning in life, and that there are limits to human understanding.
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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…
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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…
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I don't find myself interesting as a person and the details I find boring, quite frankly. You could sum it up in a few words…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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I wanted to be a poet when I was 20; I had no interest in fiction or biography and precious little interest in history, but…
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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…
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