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.

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

Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death.

Oh, I just tend to believe in things when I'm writing them. For instance, when I was writing 'Doctor Dee,' I believed in magic. And when I wrote 'Hawksmoor' I believed in psychic geography. But as soon as I type the last full stop, I'm back to being a complete blank again.

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 statement ever expressed. It is illimitable. It is Infinite London.

Familial love can find an echo in our own hearts just as it did in that of Charles Dickens.

The English have always been greedy for news of times past, with that mixture of fatalism and melancholy which is part of the national character.