Quotes from Peter Ackroyd

anxiety was, for her, a form of prayer.

Let Stone be your God and you will find God in the Stone.

As a result of Malory's plangent and often elaborate prose, the song of Arthur has never ended. Le Morte d'Arthur inspired both Milton and Dryden with dreams of Arthurian epic, and in the nineteenth century Tennyson revived the themes of Malory in Idylls of the King. William Morris wrote The Defence of Guenevere , and Algernon Swinburne composed Tristram of Liones. The Round Table was reconstituted in the libraries of nineteenth-century England.

He visited the country house of a goldsmith, Sir Robert Viner, where 'he showed me a black boy that he had that died of a consumption; and being dead, he caused him to be dried in an oven, and lies there entire in a box'.

When the city was described as pagan, it was partly because no one living among such urban suffering could have much faith in a god who allowed cities such as London to flourish.

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.

The credulity of crowds is never-ending.

lord, decked with jewels, sitting at the head of a table. It is a poetry of assonance

It is characteristic of Dickens who, when he grasps the wrong end of the stick, never fails to belabour everyone in sight with it.

Ah,' Arthur cried out, 'I have never known one month of repose since I took up the crown. I have lost the key to contentment.

In the old wild days of the world there was a king of England known as Uther Pendragon; he was a dragon in wrath as well as in power.

There is one person who can save you, sire.' 'Who is that?' 'Merlin. The great magician. He is the man who made the abbey church of Derby disappear into the earth. He will know how to heal you. He will find a cure.' 'Bring him before me. Let him work his magic on my poor bones.

Without thought he repeated some words which a boy had once chalked on the blackboard between lessons: 'A lump of coal is better than nothing. Nothing is better than God. Therefore a lump of coal is better than God'. And then he traced his own name with his finger on the cracked and broken floor.

He had been living in the dark world of his anxieties, and no infliction of reality could seem more terrible than that

Those who wander are always objects of suspicion and sometimes even of fear.

Those who hasten to be wise (...) have some times lost their own Wits.

He saw the sunlight leave the grass like an eye suddenly closed.

The names of the English have changed. Before the invasion of William I the common names were those such as Leofwine, Aelfwine, Siward and Morcar. After the Norman arrival these were slowly replaced by Robert, Walter, Henry and of course William.

worshipped was that of Mammon. It is difficult to estimate the size of monastic occupation. At the time it was believed that the clergy owned one third of the land, but it may be safe to presume that the monks controlled one sixth of English territory.

the true God is to be venerated in obscure and fearful Places, with Horror in their Approaches, and thus did our Ancestors worship the Daemon in the form of great Stones.

There is no real origin for anything. Everything just exists. Everything just exists in order to exist.

Women, of their nature, crave for liberty; they will not be ordered around like servants.

The fall of Venice was just a change in its historical identity. We cannot say that it was a disgrace or triumph, because we do not know who in the end is triumphant and who is disgraced.

Truly Time is a vast Denful of Horrour, round about which a Serpent winds and in the winding bites itself by the Tail. Now, now is the Hour, every Hour, every part of an Hour, every Moment, which in its end does begin again and never ceases to end: a beginning continuing, always ending.