Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" All my characters are me, in one way or another. "
Nick Harkaway
Me
Way
One Way
Related Quotes:
" I studied revolutions at university, and I think each revolution must begin with a moment of 'no.' If enough people have that moment at the same time, it becomes a movement. "
Nick Harkaway
Think
Time
Moment
" The end doesn't justify anything, because all we ever live with is the means. "
Nick Harkaway
End
Because
Anything
" We lose stories every day because they drift out of use and into the vast limbo of in-copyright, out-of-print books whose ownership is unclear. "
Nick Harkaway
Lose
Books
Day
" 'Gone-Away World' was a shotgun blast, an explosion out of the box I'd put myself into writing film scripts. 'Tigerman' is shorter, tighter, more crafted. "
Nick Harkaway
World
Box
More
" We don't need to chase a nostalgic rendering of Britain as it never was and never can be: we need instead an understanding of who we really are and what a happy, prosperous, just nation might look like. "
Nick Harkaway
Happy
Need
Understanding
" I grew up on the Roger Moore and Sean Connery Bond movies, so the DNA of my spies is extremely ridiculous and goofy. "
Nick Harkaway
DNA
Bond
Up
" I read my father's books growing up. I thought then and I still think now that his writing is wonderful. It delights and infuriates me in equal measure that he's still that good. "
Nick Harkaway
Good
Father
Writing
" My scientific qualifications are relatively scant. I like science. I try really hard to educate myself about it, but in the end, if something has to go 'boom,' and it would probably only go 'fwoosh,' I am relatively unconcerned about that, which is a sin, but not, I think, a grave one. "
Nick Harkaway
Sin
Myself
Science
" Happiness is boundlessly weird. Other people's choices often seem to delight them, where I would run screaming. "
Nick Harkaway
People
Choices
Happiness
" With true free speech has to come an understanding of when and when not to use it. But you can't legislate that. It must be voluntary - especially in a world where a whisper can reach a million people in an eye blink. "
Nick Harkaway
Free
Eye
World
" I work in our living room, a strange room in a strange, topsy-turvy house. I work underneath this enormous bookshelf. "
Nick Harkaway
Our
Work
House
" To my irritation, you still can't flick through an ebook properly; you can't riffle the pages, you can't look at more than one page at once. "
Nick Harkaway
Look
You
Through
" The market, as we're all painfully aware in the aftermath of the banking crisis, can be an idiot. It has no perception of right or wrong, or even sensible or insane. It sees profit. "
Nick Harkaway
Wrong
Right
Perception
" Revolutions come in two stages: the bit where everything gets smashed and the bit where you have to build it again. The first is great fun; the second is so very hard. "
Nick Harkaway
Hard
Great
Build
" Being a parent is weird. It changes people in subtle and unsubtle ways. In my case, it awoke a kind of manic sentinel in my brain. Anything in the house that might be a threat to the kids or to my wife gets terminated - food, sharp edges, poor wiring. "
Nick Harkaway
Parent
Wife
Weird
" I wanted a pseudonym partly because I'm quite shy and private. I know that sounds ludicrous, but if I should be lucky enough to make a hit, I wanted to be able to shrug off the mantel of Nick Harkaway when I got home. "
Nick Harkaway
Know
Enough
Got
" The idea that the law should punish what is rude; that government should protect our tender sensibilities from those who would - quite often with shallow motivations but sometimes with deeper and more serious complaints - challenge our national certainties and rituals, should alarm and anger us. "
Nick Harkaway
Government
Challenge
Anger
" We tend to assume that data is either private or public, either owned by one person or shared by many. In fact there's more to it than that, above and beyond the upsetting reality that private data is now anything but. "
Nick Harkaway
Now
Reality
Person
" My family has something of a special relationship with confidence tricks: my grandfather was a professional swindler. "
Nick Harkaway
Family
Relationship
Confidence
" The mainstream of literary culture in the U.K. is very averse to writing about technology. "
Nick Harkaway
Culture
Writing
Technology
" Names aren't just coathooks, they're coats. They're the first thing anyone knows about you. "
Nick Harkaway
Coats
First
Just
" I'm caught somewhere between introversion and extroversion. Performance is natural to me, joyful, but it is also exhausting. I can feed on it, but the expense is high, too, like being a carnivore: I have to chase down my meals. "
Nick Harkaway
Down
Me
Natural
" Sir Terry Pratchett - he was knighted in 2009, and on him it looked earned rather than entitled - wrote about dragons, wizards, turtles, witches, time-travelling monks, and suitcases with legs. "
Nick Harkaway
Legs
Witches
Dragons
" I'm not shy, exactly, but I am private. I don't like to talk about myself. I had to learn - I was interviewed for print, radio and even TV. "
Nick Harkaway
Myself
I Am
Talk
" I know that when I talk to my parents and my friends, there's a strong feeling of the world out of control and damaged. "
Nick Harkaway
Strong
Friends
Control
" My reading of history is that we continually inherit trouble. "
Nick Harkaway
History
Inherit
Trouble
" I'm not an absolutist about free speech. Intellectually, I believe that most of the time it's better to let things get said, argue them, and put lies and stupidities to rest. Practically, I know that newspapers rarely issue corrections with the same prominence they give to denouncements - and Twitter, by its nature, never does. "
Nick Harkaway
Know
Rest
Nature
" We are bodies which think, and we're at home with steampunk because it is an ethos of design and creativity which acknowledges the humanly physical: that which we can understand with our fingers. "
Nick Harkaway
Think
Home
Design
" The Internet has the capacity to extend to us genuine choice, and that is not without risk. Real power does entail real responsibility. "
Nick Harkaway
Internet
Choice
Power
" My dad and I compete on the pool table; that's the most important competition of our lives. The fact that I'm writing and it works for me is one of the great joys for him. We talk about writing, and it's great. "
Nick Harkaway
Me
Pool
Competition