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" Orwell has always been a huge influence on me. "
Robert Harris
Influence
Huge
Been
Related Quotes:
" Unlike the Holocaust, Stalin's murders are forgotten: dust blowing in the wind. "
Robert Harris
Holocaust
Dust
Wind
" 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
" 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
" It implies a slight failure as a writer that you are reduced to being a ghostwriter for the money. "
Robert Harris
Money
Failure
You
" 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. "
Robert Harris
Say
Politics
Scared
" My literary career was a fluke. Utterly unexpected. "
Robert Harris
Literary
Utterly
Unexpected
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I think that whenever a nation feels itself to be at is zenith, it starts to feel a creeping sense of anxiety. "
Robert Harris
Anxiety
Feel
Nation
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" The financial world is at the cutting edge of high technology. "
Robert Harris
World
High
Edge
" 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
" We say, 'The market plummets,' like it's some roaring creature. "
Robert Harris
Say
Like
Roaring
" 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
" 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
" Don't try to write too much in a single session. One thousand words a day is quite enough. Stop after about four or five hours. "
Robert Harris
Too Much
Day
Try
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 find out what you think by talking to yourself. "
Robert Harris
Yourself
You
Think
" 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