Quotes by Peter Ackroyd

“And when I was young, did I ever tell you, I always wanted to get insidea book and never come out again? I loved reading so much I wantedto be a part of it, and there were some books I could have s...”

“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 ...”

“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.”

“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, ...”

“The people had once created the city. The city now created the people, or, more exactly, the people of Venice now identified themselves more in terms of the city. The private had become public.”

“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 a...”

“And when the Duke of Alva ordered three hundred Citizens to be put to Death together at Antwerp, a Lady who saw the Sight was presently afterwards deliver'd of a Child without a Head. So lives the ...”

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

“On his thirteenth birthday he had seen a film in which the central character was a painter who, unable to sell his work, grew cold and hungry as he went from one unsuccessful interview to the next;...”

“It's difficult to know where to begin, sir.''Yes, the beginning is the tricky part. But perhaps there is no beginning, perhaps we can't look that far back.' He got up from his desk and went over to...”

“You say that it is time to shake off the Mist, but Mankind walks in a Mist; that Reason which you cry up as the Glory of this Age is a Proteus and Cameleon that changes its Shape almost in every Ma...”

“We went back into the Mens Apartments where there were others raving of Ships that may fly and silvered Creatures upon the Moon: Their Stories seem to have neither Head nor Tayl to them, Sir Chris....”

“What is the sweetness of flowers compared to the savour of dust and confinement?”

“I am the scourge of God”

“None of these apparent sightings interested Hawksmoor, since it was quite usual for members of the public to come forward with such accounts and to describe unreal figures who took on the adventiti...”

“Be informed, also, that this good and savoury Parish is the home of Hectors, Trapanners, Biters who all go under the general appelation of Rooks. Here are all the Jilts, Cracks, Prostitutes, Night-...”

“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 Wi...”

“She went downstairs slowly and sat in front of the fire, rocking herself to and fro as she imagined all of the harm he might have suffered: she could see him enticed into a car by a stranger, she c...”

“His terror became his companion. When it seemed to diminish, or grow easier to bear, he forced himself to remember the details of what he had said and done so that his fears returned, redoubled. Hi...”

“A woman is a deep Ditch, said he, her House inclines to Death and her Paths unto the Devil”