Quotes by Peter Ackroyd

About Peter Ackroyd:

Peter Ackroyd is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a particular interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, William Blake, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot and Sir Thomas More, he won the Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards. He is noted for the volume of work he has produced, the range of styles therein, his skill at assuming different voices and the depth of his research.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

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

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.

Peter Ackroyd

London has always provided the landscape for my imagination. It becomes a character - a living being - within each of my books.

Peter Ackroyd

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, an...

Peter Ackroyd

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 feel like a charlatan and a fraud.

Peter Ackroyd

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

I strike up conversations all the time and it is very interesting, finding out about things I know nothing about.

Peter Ackroyd

As a Londoner I was able to see how the world of power and money cast its shadow on those who failed.

Peter Ackroyd

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 demandin...

Peter Ackroyd

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, ...

Peter Ackroyd

Familial love can find an echo in our own hearts just as it did in that of Charles Dickens.

Peter Ackroyd

I detest self-regard. If my work has taught me anything, it is that self-aggrandisement is completely unhistorical.

Peter Ackroyd

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 illum...

Peter Ackroyd

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

Author Bio

  • NamePeter Ackroyd
  • DescriptionEnglish author
  • BornOctober 5, 1949
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionPoet; Writer; Literary Historian; Historian; Novelist
  • AwardsCommander Of The Order Of The British Empire; James Tait Black Memorial Prize