Quotes by Peter Ackroyd - Page 2 | QuoteForever

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You don't have to be brought up in a grand house to have a sense of the past, and I truly believe that there are certain people to whom or through whom the territory - the place, the past - speaks.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Believe
Past
People
Territory
Grand
Believe Past People
Speaks
Whom
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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.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Aim
Guy
Play
Significant
Writing
Work Always Me
Suppose
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What captivity has been to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish. For us, the romance of our native land begins only after we have left home; it is really only with other people that we become Irishmen.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Home
Land
People
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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.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Believe
Song
Want
Beliefs
Pretend
Lee
Suppose
Peggy
Something Else
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London goes beyond any boundary or convention.It contains every wish or word ever spoken, every action or gesture ever made, every harsh or noble statement ever expressed. It is illimitable. It is Infinite London.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Gestures
Noble
Wish
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And when I was young, did I ever tell you, I always wanted to get inside a book and never come out again? I loved reading so much I wanted to be a part of it, and there were some books I could have stayed in for ever.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Book
Reading
Young
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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 / Biographer
Clothes
Creating
Smell
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My great fear has always been complete and utter failure. Hence, you see, all the dispossessed people in my fiction, and why I try to earn as much money as I can. It's a defense. I don't enjoy it or do anything with it.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Defense
People
Trying
As Much Money
Complete
Utter
Dispossessed
Earn
Hence
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Murderers will try to recall the sequence of events, they will remember exactly what they did just before and just after. But they can never remember the actual moment of killing. This is why they will always leave a clue.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Clue
Events
Remember
Sequence
Trying
Actual
Exactly
Exactly What
Recall
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None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Book
Instinct
Planning
Release
Grab
Medium
None
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His head was boiled, impaled upon a pole and raised above London Bridge. So ended the life of Thomas More, one of the few Londoners upon whom sainthood has been conferred and the first English layman to be beatified as a martyr.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Layman
London
Martyr
Raised
Sainthood
Above
Bridge
Conferred
Ended
Pole
Thomas
Whom
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It's only recently that we've discovered that the artist's inner self is somehow more important than the public world. I'm happier to create exterior pieces for the world rather than to express something I deeply feel or wish to say.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Artist
Inner Self
Self
Wish
World Important Feel
Deeply
Express
Inner
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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 agreeable lives, and in constant intercourse with one another, will build a city as beautiful as Paris.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Men
Aspiration
Beautiful
Cities
Constant
Intercourse
Paris
Agreeable
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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 a definite similarity of purpose between a book set in the future and a book set in the past.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Book
Definite
Papers
Past
Perspective
Plato
Present Moment
Purpose
Similarity
Future Moment Past
Distant
In The Past
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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 as a fellow. I spent two years there. After that, George Gale made me literary editor of 'The Spectator.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Editors
Reading
School
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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 as a fellow. I spent two years there. After that, George Gale made me literary editor of 'The Spectator.'
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Cambridge
Enjoyed
Extending
Gale
University
Editor
Literary
Fellow
George
Spectator
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Rioting has always been a London tradition. It has been since the early Middle Ages. There's hardly a spate of years that goes by without violent rioting of one kind or another. They happen so frequently that they are almost part of London's texture.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Age
Middle Ages
Rioting
Texture
Years
Ages
Frequently
Hardly
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I have liv'd long enough for others, like the Dog in the Wheel, and it is now the Season to begin for myself: I cannot change that Thing call'd Time, but I can alter its Posture and, as Boys do turn a looking-glass against the Sunne, so I will dazzle you all.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Boys
Dog
Glasses
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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 / Biographer
Doubt
Historical
Influential
Manifestation
No Doubt
Play
Sober
Theatre
Iii
Shakespeare
Witnessed
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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 / Biographer
House
People
Two
Walk Look People
Heads
Houses
Tops
Types
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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 / Biographer
Believe
Blank
Geography
Instance
Magic
Psychics
Writing
Believed
Doctor
Complete
Psychic
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It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, of character and of incident. It is also a portrait of the great general drama of the human spirit.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Adventure
Character
Drama
Human Spirit
Intellect
Narrative
Historians
Incident
Portrait
Seize
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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 / Biographer
Birth
Blank
Father
Pages
Years
Blank Page
Date
Copy
Geoffrey
Noted
Page
References
Remarkably
Thomas
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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 / Biographer
Appeals
Courtroom
Detectives
Drama
Game Shows
Games
Guilt
Jessica
Law
Program
Soap
Soap Operas
Television
Love Money Me
Love Money Game
Dramas
Mason
Operas
Perry
Plots
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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 or sentences really: came from nothing. Self-educated. Luck. Energy. Curiosity. Ambition. That's it. Nothing at all can illuminate the work as far as I can tell.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Ambition
Curiosity
Details
Interesting
Luck
Self
Sentences
Frankly
Illuminate
Quite Frankly
Sum
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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 spiritual as well as the material. I have always been attracted to the Gothic and spiritual imagination, and I've always been interested in visionaries.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Imagination
Exercise
Gothic
Material World
Spiritual
Visionaries
Believed
Sources
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He stood beneath the white tower, and looked up at it with that mournful expression which his face always carried in repose: for one moment he thought of climbing up its cracked and broken stone, and then from its summit screaming down at the silent city as a child might scream at a chained animal.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Animal
Children
Climbing
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London' is a gallery of sensation of impressions. It is a history of London in a thematic rather than a chronological sense with chapters of the history of smells, the history of silence, and the history of light. I have described the book as a labyrinth, and in that sense in complements my description of London itself.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Book
Light
Smell
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'London' is a gallery of sensation of impressions. It is a history of London in a thematic rather than a chronological sense with chapters of the history of smells, the history of silence, and the history of light. I have described the book as a labyrinth, and in that sense in complements my description of London itself.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Chapters
Description
Gallery
Labyrinth
Silence
Thematic
Chronological
Sensation
Smells
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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 / Biographer
English Language
Historian
Novelists
Piano
Produce
Unnatural
Writing
Demanding
Divisions
Equivalent
He Or She
String
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There is a word in Old English which belongs wholly to that civilization - "dustsceawung," meaning contemplation of dust. It is a true image of the Anglo-Saxon mind, or at least an echo of that consciousness which considered transcience and loss to be part of the human estate; it was a world in which life was uncertain and the principal diety was fate or destiny or "wyrd."
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Destiny
Fate
Loss
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The embrace of present and past time, in which English antiquarianism becomes a form of alchemy, engenders a strange timelessness. It is as if the little bird which flew through the Anglo-Saxon banqueting hall, in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, gained the outer air and became the lark ascending in Vaughan Williams's orchestral setting. The unbroken chain is that of English music itself.
Peter Ackroyd / Biographer
Air
Bird
Past
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