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Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
32b8373	Generally he knew by instinct the likely length of an investigation, but on this occasion he did not: as he fought to get his breath he suddenly saw himself as others must see him, and he was struck by the impossibility of his task. The event of the boy's death was not simple because it was not unique and if he traced it backwards, running the time slowly in the opposite direction (but did it have a direction?), it became no clearer. The ch..		murder detective	Peter Ackroyd
4ca2f96	The music of a popular song now came from the radio as Hawksmoor gazed out of the window; and he saw a door closing, a boy dropping a coin in the street, a woman turning her head, a man calling. For a moment he wondered why such things were occurring now: could it be that the world sprang up around him only as he invented it second by second and that, like a dream, it faded into the darkness from which it had come as soon as he moved forwar..			Peter Ackroyd
30b6212	It has often been said that the more unusual the murder the easier it is to solve, but this is a theory I don't believe. Nothing is easy, nothing is simple, and you should think of your investigations as a complicated experiment: look at what remains constant and look at what changes, ask the right questions and don't be afraid of wrong answers, and above all rely on observation and rely on experience.		murder investigation detective	Peter Ackroyd
bec78ff	He was clearly not the murderer whom Hawksmoor was seeking, but it was generally the innocent who confessed: in the course of many enquiries, Hawksmoor had come across those who accused themselves of crimes which they had not committed and who demanded to be taken away before they could do more harm. He was acquainted with such people and recognised them at once - although they were noticeable, perhaps, only for a slight twitch in the eye o..		madness confessions mentall-illness guilt	Peter Ackroyd
a235179	None of these apparent sightings interested Hawksmoor, since it was quite usual for members of the public to come forward with such accounts and to describe unreal figures who took on the adventitious shape already suggested by newspaper accounts. There were even occasions when a number of people would report sightings of the same person, as if a group of hallucinations might create their own object which then seemed to hover for a while in..		murder witness witnesses	Peter Ackroyd
3c6bd5c	And I was a Child again, watching the bright World. But the Spell broke when at this Juncture some Gallants jumped from the Pitt onto the Stage and behaved as so many Merry-Andrews among the Actors, which reduced all to Confusion. I laugh'd with them also, for I like to make Merry among the Fallen and there is pleasure to be had in the Observation of the Deformity of Things. Thus when the Play resumed after the Disturbance, it was only to e..		crowds plays audiences entertainment play	Peter Ackroyd
8a066ac	I asked him what he said, for there was such a mish-mash of Conversation around us that I could scarcely understand him - the frequenters of Taverns have Hearts of Curd and Souls of Milk Sop, but they have Mouths like Cannons which stink of Tobacco and their own foul Breath as they cry What News? What's a Clock? Methinks it's Cold to Day! Thus is it a Hospital For Fools		tavern drunken-behaviour drunkeness	Peter Ackroyd
b174e19	DYER. (Sits down) There was nothing that I recall save that the Sunne was a Round flat shining Disc and the Thunder was a Noise from a Drum or a Pan. VANNBRUGGHE. (Aside) What a Child is this! (To Dyer) These are only our Devices, and are like the Paint of our Painted Age. DYER. But in Meditation the Sunne is a vast and glorious Body, and Thunder is the most forcible and terrible Phaenomenon: it is not to be mocked, for the highest Passio..		plays thunder sun symbolism	Peter Ackroyd
92c0e3e	DYER. No, I am not of your Mind, for the Dialogue was fitted up with too much Facility. Words must be pluckt from Obscurity and nourished with Care, improved with Art and corrected with Application. Labour and Time are the Instruments in the perfection of all Work.		words writing	Peter Ackroyd
ceea00f	Then he took the pages, smoothed them with the palm of his hand, and fixed them with pins to the walls. So that now, if he sat looking down upon Grape Street, the letters and images encircled him. And it was while he sat here, scarcely moving, that he was in hell and no one knew it. At such times the future became so clear that it was as if he were remembering it, remembering it in place of the past which he could no longer describe. But th..		time	Peter Ackroyd
6f21d00	Suffering is intrinsic to human existence. There is no joy without its attendant pain.			Peter Ackroyd
e7421b3	It might be compared to some organism which sloughs off its old skin, or texture, in order to live again. It is a city which has the ability to dance upon its own ashes.			Peter Ackroyd
9d2195e	Yet, of course, and more especially, the executioners themselves became notorious. The first known public hangman was one Bull, who was followed by the more celebrated Derrick. "And Derrick must be his host," Dekker wrote of a horse-thief in his Bellman of London (1608), "and Tiburne the land at which he will light." There was a proverb--"If Derrick's cables do but hold"--which referred to an ingenious structure, like a crane, upon which tw..			Peter Ackroyd
af7bd54	Let Stone be your God and you will find God in the Stone.			Peter Ackroyd
da2d817	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.		time hour minute repetition	Peter Ackroyd
8716255	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.			Peter Ackroyd
29544fe	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.		occult-architecture occultism	Peter Ackroyd
760c634	Women, of their nature, crave for liberty; they will not be ordered around like servants.		women thecanterburytales	Peter Ackroyd
3c3eb3d	it has been observed that Londoners became more extravagant in the presence of Charles Dickens, so that they might appear more Dickensian, so			Peter Ackroyd
4c93c22	it is a dreadfull thing to look down Praecipices.		fear-of-heights vertigo falling	Peter Ackroyd
0ff4465	anxiety was, for her, a form of prayer.			Peter Ackroyd
f81bb38	If I were a Writer now, I would wish to thicken the water of my Discourse so that it was no longer easy or familiar. I would chuse a huge lushious Style!			Peter Ackroyd
ffad9cd	I am in the Pitte, but I have gone so deep that I can see the brightness of the Starres at Noon.			Peter Ackroyd
e68c4a0	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'.			Peter Ackroyd
dc8b39c	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.		culture	Peter Ackroyd
c2fa2e7	The credulity of crowds is never-ending.			Peter Ackroyd
177c627	lord, decked with jewels, sitting at the head of a table. It is a poetry of assonance			Peter Ackroyd
d8ce8bf	from what Purse are we building these Churches, Walter? From the Imposicion on Coles. And are the Coles not the blackest Element, which with their Smoak hide the Sunne? Certainly they feed the Fires of this City, says he. And where is the Light and Easinesse there? Since we take our Revenues from the Under-world, what does it Signifie if we also Build upon the Dead?			Peter Ackroyd
c0c9f8a	But just as my philosophy had ceased to interest me as soon as it was formulated into a set of principles so, when I saw myself being imitated, I realised at once what an incubus my aesthetic personality might become if I were to be trapped within it. Imitation changes, not the impersonator, but the impersonated.		psychology	Peter Ackroyd
0263fb3	It is the nature of humankind to idealize, to indulge in excessive praise as well as unjust condemnation.		stereotypes	Peter Ackroyd
c3df437	I can recall quite clearly the journey from Omaha to San Francisco which I made with the opera troupe; God had created the world in less time than it took us to travel across America.		humour	Peter Ackroyd
b527c2a	the great advantage of really contemporary fiction is that one finds oneself mirror on every page			Peter Ackroyd
c914ae0	the great advantage of really contemporary fiction is that one finds oneself mirrored on every page			Peter Ackroyd
ad20eb0	And we recall in Dickens' fiction how universal it is that a child looks after an adult, and how the adult remains so dependent upon the child that he becomes something worse than child-like.			Peter Ackroyd
fe43c3f	what think you of that, Nick, since you allwaies have your Head stuck in old Books? And I said nothing, for who can speak of the Mazes of the Serpent to those who are not lost in them?			Peter Ackroyd
95edd9d	Never be curious. It is the path to perdition.			Peter Ackroyd
63f6bfe	Some drink to forget, I drink to remember. I drink in order to understand what I mean and to discover what I know. Under its benign influence all the stories and dramas which properly belong to the sphere of art are announced by me in conversation.		humour oscar-wilde	Peter Ackroyd
30efc9f	absinthe removes the bitter taste of failure and grants me strange visions which are charming principally because they cannot be written down. Only in absinthe do I become entirely free and, when I drink it, I understand the symbolic mysteries of odour and of colour.		humour oscar-wilde	Peter Ackroyd
c64f803	A letter from a French cleric to Nicholas of St. Albans, written c. 1178, rehearsed what was already a familiar perception: Your island is surrounded by water, and not unnaturally its inhabitants are affected by the nature of the element in which they live. Unsubstantial fantasies slide easily into their minds. They think their dreams to be visions, and their visions to be divine. We cannot blame them, for such is the nature of their land. ..		imagination island water	Peter Ackroyd
68d1c30	The English seem to relish unsystematic learning of this kind, in the same manner that they embarked upon "Grand Tours" of Europe in pursuit of a peripatetic scholarship."		learning grand-tour europe travelling	Peter Ackroyd
bad9465	dyer. (Looking at him scornfully) So that is why Wits swarm like Egypt's Frogs. If I were a Writer now, I would wish to thicken the water of my Discourse so that it was no longer easy or familiar. I would chuse a huge lushious Style! vannbrugghe. (Interrupting) Ah the music of Erudition, it is unimaginable to weaker Wits. dyer. (Ignoring him) I would imploy outlandish Phrases and fantasti-call Terms, thus to restore Terrour, Reverence and D..			Peter Ackroyd
ddf9289	I am in the Pitte, but I have gone so deep that I can see the brightness of the Starres at Noon		occult pit	Peter Ackroyd
d1404fe	One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines.		shakespeare writing oscar-wilde	Peter Ackroyd
80f2282	Those in their snug Bed-chambers may call the Fears of Night meer Bugbears, but their Minds have not pierced into the Horror of the World which others, who are adrift upon it, know.		nightmares horror	Peter Ackroyd

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