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 Read Quote
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 foot of the bed. Peter Ackroyd Read Quote
I detest self-regard. If my work has taught me anything, it is that self-aggrandisement is completely unhistorical. Peter Ackroyd Read Quote
Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death. Peter Ackroyd Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Familial love can find an echo in our own hearts just as it did in that of Charles Dickens. Peter Ackroyd Read Quote
As a Londoner I was able to see how the world of power and money cast its shadow on those who failed. Peter Ackroyd Read Quote
It sometimes seems to me that the whole course of English history was one of accident, confusion, chance and unintended consequences – there’s no real pattern. Peter Ackroyd Read Quote
