Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power. "
Robert Harris
Power
Political
Politics
Related Quotes:
" 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. "
Robert Harris
Terrorism
World
Time
" My literary career was a fluke. Utterly unexpected. "
Robert Harris
Literary
Utterly
Unexpected
" There's nothing more interesting than the details of someone's life. "
Robert Harris
Life
Details
Interesting
" 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
" In a way I'm almost more rueful about the notion of having a non-ideological Labour party than I am about the personality of Tony Blair. "
Robert Harris
More
I Am
Personality
" 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. "
Robert Harris
Change
Alone
You
" 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. "
Robert Harris
You
Look
Control
" If you go back, 'The Great Gatsby' would be a portrait of the rich and fortune made by business. "
Robert Harris
Great
Rich
Go
" Within reason, I can write what I like and spend as long doing it as is necessary. That is a luxury beyond price. "
Robert Harris
Doing
Long
Price
" You can't ever win the war on crime, or the war on terror. You can't repeal human nature. "
Robert Harris
Win
You
Human Nature
" Writers and journalists tend to be simplistic about politics when, like all other areas of life, it's more complicated. "
Robert Harris
More
Politics
Complicated
" It's when you've stopped writing and are doing other things, especially when you're asleep, that the real work is done. "
Robert Harris
Work
Real
Done
" 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. "
Robert Harris
Growing Up
You
Happiness
" Everyone thinks politics will just go on the way it is. I don't agree. "
Robert Harris
Everyone
Agree
Go
" Writers of fiction should stick to writing, not pop up on panel shows or as a talking head. "
Robert Harris
Up
Pop
Stick
" First comes an idea. Then, characters begin to evolve out of the landscape of that idea. And then, finally, characters dominate: plot is simply a function of what these people might do or be. Everything has to flow from their personalities; otherwise it will not be emotionally engaging, or plausible. "
Robert Harris
People
Flow
Everything
" 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. "
Robert Harris
Age
Think
Live
" Storytelling has a narcotic power. "
Robert Harris
Narcotic
Storytelling
Power
" My father left school at 14, my mother at 13. My father was clever and well-read. He took a newspaper, always watched the news, discussed it all the time. "
Robert Harris
Mother
Father
Time
" 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. "
Robert Harris
Body
Way
Today
" 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. "
Robert Harris
Find
You
Think
" Politics is never a victory, it's just the remorseless grinding forward of events. "
Robert Harris
Victory
Forward
Events
" You know, you can be really quite subversive in popular fiction, which is capable of taking on big issues of politics, war, the rise and fall of commercial dynasties. "
Robert Harris
You
War
Rise
" It implies a slight failure as a writer that you are reduced to being a ghostwriter for the money. "
Robert Harris
Money
Failure
You
" Unlike the Holocaust, Stalin's murders are forgotten: dust blowing in the wind. "
Robert Harris
Holocaust
Dust
Wind
" 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. "
Robert Harris
Fast
Financial
Think
" I think it's very, very hard not to go slightly crazy if you're in the top in politics - especially if you're there for a long time. "
Robert Harris
Time
Think
You
" My parents were interested in history and the world. My father read Graham Greene and Georges Simenon and was a strong trade unionist and Labour supporter. "
Robert Harris
Strong
World
Parents
" I write as well as I can. I'm a journalist at heart, so it's the story that matters. "
Robert Harris
Write
Story
Matters
" 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. "
Robert Harris
Time
History
Light