Peter Ackroyd

“I am a spiritualist, but I am not a religious man.”

“The past is not a foreign land. It is a living presence.”

“London is a roost for every bird.”

“The city is a labyrinth, and I am one of its inhabitants.”

“Biography is a very definite region of the literary map, with its own rules and its own wildernesses.”

“I believe that the writer should be a transparent medium.”

“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible.”

“There is a history of London's smells, from the aromatic woodsmoke of the Middle Ages to the stench of the plague.”

“London has always been a haven for extremists, for the bizarre, for the eccentric.”

“In a sense, I have always been a man of the 18th century.”

“To write about London is to write about the world.”

“I don't think you can know anyone until you've seen them in their own country.”

“History is not a narrative of events. It is a narrative of change.”