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" I can't get very excited about the House of Commons these days because I don't feel the power is there. What is really bizarre is that you sense it is not in Washington either. It is now very hard even to locate the levers of power, let alone to pull them and change things. "

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" Cut your manuscript ruthlessly but never throw anything away: it's amazing how often a discarded scene or description, which wouldn't fit in one place, will work perfectly later. "

Robert Harris

Never

Away

Amazing

" We live in an age of great jitteriness in the financial markets. And there's no doubt at all, I think, that the volume of computer-traded stocks has helped contribute to that. "

" Cicero most reminds me of Harold Wilson. Both men knew how to keep the show on the road. "

" Orwell has always been a huge influence on me. "

" I used to love politics. I can't say I do any more. All the fun has gone out of it. Each side is engaged in this trench warfare of managerialism. They're all too scared to say anything that might make them appear something other than completely bland. "

" There's nothing more interesting than the details of someone's life. "

" We say, 'The market plummets,' like it's some roaring creature. "

Robert Harris

Say

Roaring

" It's easy enough to get into power. You can make promises and try to be all things to all people. But the moment you have to make decisions, you're going to annoy at least half of them. Whatever you do, in the end you're almost certain to be brought down by your own character traits. "

" I think a lot of us feel, when we look at the Dow Jones plunging, alienated - you do feel as if we're in the grip of some alien force that slipped human control. "

" Writing a novel - unlike operating a piece of heavy machinery, say, or cooking a chicken - is not a skill that can be taught. There is no standard way of doing it, just as there is no means of telling, while you're doing it, whether you're doing it well or badly. And merely because you've done it well once doesn't mean you can do it well again. "

" I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power. "

" Leaders today are isolated by phalanxes of body guards. It's profoundly undemocratic, the way they have used terrorism as a means to protect themselves. "

" Humans have changed little over time. We think we've invented the modern world but they were making better speeches 2,000 years ago and grappling with issues of empire and terrorism. "

" If you go back, 'The Great Gatsby' would be a portrait of the rich and fortune made by business. "

Robert Harris

Great

Rich

" You can't ever win the war on crime, or the war on terror. You can't repeal human nature. "

" History is what we bring to it, not just the events themselves, but how we interpret those events. "

" Politics is never a victory, it's just the remorseless grinding forward of events. "

" Storytelling has a narcotic power. "

" The financial world is at the cutting edge of high technology. "

" I think that whenever a nation feels itself to be at is zenith, it starts to feel a creeping sense of anxiety. "

" Working 14 hours a day until you're 55 and missing your kids growing up is not what I would consider a recipe for happiness. "

" I write as well as I can. I'm a journalist at heart, so it's the story that matters. "

" Writers and journalists tend to be simplistic about politics when, like all other areas of life, it's more complicated. "

Robert Harris

Politics

Complicated

" If one tries to think about history, it seems to me - it's like looking at a range of mountains. And the first time you see them, they look one way. But then time changes, the pattern of light shifts. Maybe you've moved slightly, your perspective has changed. The mountains are the same, but they look very different. "

" One cannot see any world leader who has got a grip on the financial markets these days. They're too big, too fast. I think that's quite scary. "

" One gains a double benefit in writing about the past, conjuring up how things might have been, and at the same time acquiring a different perspective on the present. "

" Social mores change all the time. In the mid-1970s, it would've been astonishing, say, to see two men holding hands in the streets. And the attitude to having a fling with a girl, or whatever, was quite different then. "

" The true currency of life is time, not money, and we've all got a limited stock of that. "

" Writers of fiction should stick to writing, not pop up on panel shows or as a talking head. "

Robert Harris

Pop

Stick

" I like to take people you wouldn't really think people would write novels about: an aqueduct engineer, a code-breaker, a hedge-fund manager. It's in those sorts of lives that I find more fascination than in a CIA operative or a Marine or something like that. "