Peter Ackroyd Quotes

the great advantage of really contemporary fiction is that one finds oneself mirrored on every page

Destruction is like a snow-ball rolled down a Hill, for its Bulk encreases by its own swiftness and thus Disorder spreads.

I am in the Pitte, but I have gone so deep that I can see the brightness of the Starres at Noon

The gateway to the underworld is seen as part antiquity and part theatre. Welcome to the lower depths.

I am the scourge of God

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

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

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.

Those in their snug Bed-chambers may call the Fears of Night meer Bugbears, but their Minds have not pierced into the Horror of the World which others, who are adrift upon it, know.

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

I would have no need for the Memory Of Things past if those which were Present were more agreeable

The English seem to relish unsystematic learning of this kind, in the same manner that they embarked upon "Grand Tours" of Europe in pursuit of a peripatetic scholarship.

Insecurity of the spirit demands completeness elsewhere.

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.