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 r…

- Peter Ackroyd

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 sta…

- Peter Ackroyd

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 mo…

- Peter Ackroyd

There is no humiliation worse than the consciousness of a wasted life. It stains the spirit, forestalls hope, and destroys any motive for action or c…

- Peter Ackroyd

Only those with great ambitions know what great fears drive them forward.

- Peter Ackroyd

The ordinary routines of life are never chronicled by the historian, but they make up almost the whole of experience.

- 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

I don't believe necessarily the past is in the past. It's eternal, it's all around us.

- Peter Ackroyd

The world is a sea in which we all must surely drown.

- Peter Ackroyd