Robert Harris Quotes

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Quite, Capable

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Telling, Machinery

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Doubt, Markets

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Served, Backdrop

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Astonishing, Quite

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Acquiring, Gains

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Labour, Parents

• 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

  Topics in Father

  Tags in Took, Newspaper

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Terrorism, Profoundly

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Annoy, Promises

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Fun, Warfare

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Grip, Alienated

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Skilled, Equivalent

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Fascination, Novels

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Alone, Pull

• I am sure future historians will say the biggest and most astonishing change in politics has been the embracing of all the tenets of Thatcherism by the party of Keir Hardie: trade union legislation, Europe, the replacement of Trident, 10 per cent tax for people who have made millions from their companies.

  Robert Harris

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Legislation, Cent

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Terrorism, Issues

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Medical, Condition

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Suspect, Keep Going

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Plot, Dominate

Robert Harris (53)

Birth:	7th March, 1957
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Author, Journalist, Novelist, Screenwriter, Writer

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Today's Anniversary - 3rd December

Births

• 1950 - Alberto Juantorena
• 1897 - Kate O'Brien
• 1970 - Stephanie Herseth Sandlin
• 1955 - Warren Jeffs
• 1987 - Alicia Sacramone

Deaths

• 1894 - Robert Louis Stevenson
• 1993 - Lewis Thomas
• 1962 - Mary Gilmore
• 1910 - Mary Baker Eddy
• 1981 - Walter Knott