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" My greatest regret as a writer is that I've never been able to include as many jokes as I'd like. "
Robert Harris
Jokes
Regret
Greatest
Related Quotes:
" I see myself as the literary equivalent of a skilled lathe-operator, or a basket-weaver; a potter, maybe: I make mildly diverting objects that people want to buy. "
Robert Harris
See
I See
Want
" 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
" For me, as I suspect for most people, there comes a point where you have enough. If you've got £20 million, why keep going until you've got £100 million or £1,000 million? Does anyone need another vast yacht or private jet or a house full of gold? "
Robert Harris
Me
You
People
" 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. "
Robert Harris
Cooking
You
You Can Do It
" 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
" 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
" If you go back, 'The Great Gatsby' would be a portrait of the rich and fortune made by business. "
Robert Harris
Great
Rich
Go
" To tell a good story and to illuminate the world: the two things are completely linked. That is the point. That is what I've always wanted to do. "
Robert Harris
World
Always
Good
" 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
" 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
" 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
" The financial markets tend to be just a backdrop for a novel, for a heist or something that isn't necessarily integral to it. On the whole, I don't think the financial world has been well served by novels. "
Robert Harris
Well
Financial
World
" 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
" Having the urge to write a novel, especially if you've yet to be published, is like having a medical condition impossible to mention in polite company - it's a relief simply to know there are fellow-sufferers out there. "
Robert Harris
Medical
Know
Company
" My literary career was a fluke. Utterly unexpected. "
Robert Harris
Literary
Utterly
Unexpected
" You find out what you think by talking to yourself. "
Robert Harris
Yourself
You
Think
" 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. "
Robert Harris
Perspective
Time
Writing
" 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. "
Robert Harris
Men
Attitude
Change
" Cicero most reminds me of Harold Wilson. Both men knew how to keep the show on the road. "
Robert Harris
Most
Road
Show
" There's nothing more interesting than the details of someone's life. "
Robert Harris
Life
Details
Interesting
" 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 was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power. "
Robert Harris
Power
Political
Politics
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Robert Harris
End
Character
Power