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" Storytelling has a narcotic power. "
Robert Harris
Narcotic
Storytelling
Power
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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Strong
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Parents
" 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. "
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Time
" It implies a slight failure as a writer that you are reduced to being a ghostwriter for the money. "
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Money
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You
" You can't ever win the war on crime, or the war on terror. You can't repeal human nature. "
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Human Nature
" 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
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" 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
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Scared
" 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
" My literary career was a fluke. Utterly unexpected. "
Robert Harris
Literary
Utterly
Unexpected
" 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
" There's nothing more interesting than the details of someone's life. "
Robert Harris
Life
Details
Interesting
" Unlike the Holocaust, Stalin's murders are forgotten: dust blowing in the wind. "
Robert Harris
Holocaust
Dust
Wind
" 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
" 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
" I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power. "
Robert Harris
Power
Political
Politics
" 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
" We say, 'The market plummets,' like it's some roaring creature. "
Robert Harris
Say
Like
Roaring
" 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
" Politics is never a victory, it's just the remorseless grinding forward of events. "
Robert Harris
Victory
Forward
Events
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
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Medical
Know
Company
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Orwell has always been a huge influence on me. "
Robert Harris
Influence
Huge
Been
" 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
" 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