Peter Ackroyd Quotes

67 quotes in 1088 categories

• I detest self-regard. If my work has taught me anything, it is that self-aggrandisement is completely unhistorical.
• I don't believe necessarily the past is in the past. It's eternal, it's all around us.
• I don't in any sense think of myself as a celebrity, which of course I'm not.
• I never read in bed, only in my study.
• 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…
• I strike up conversations all the time and it is very interesting, finding out about things I know nothing about.
• 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…
• London has always provided the landscape for my imagination. It becomes a character - a living being - within each of my books.
• People are much more interesting than people realise.
• 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.
• There are certain people who seem doomed to buy certain houses. The house expects them. It waits for them.
• 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.
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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 enjoyed reading and learning at school, and at university I enjoyed extending my reading and learning. Once I left Cambridge, I went to Yale…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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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