Quotes from Robert Harris

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.

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.

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.

The natural impulse of men is to follow and whoever has the strongest sense of purpose will always dominate.

Cicero most reminds me of Harold Wilson. Both men knew how to keep the show on the road.

It is perseverance, and not genius that takes a man to the top. Rome is full of unrecognized geniuses. Only perseverance enables you to move forward in the world.

You can always spot a fool, for he is a man who will tell you he knows who is going to win an election.

Does a name stick because it suits a man or does the man, unconsciously, evolve into his name?

That young man seeks opportunities to test his principles as readily as a drunk picks fights in a bar.

The true currency of life is time, not money, and we've all got a limited stock of that.

It implies a slight failure as a writer that you are reduced to being a ghostwriter for the money.

You can't ever win the war on crime, or the war on terror. You can't repeal human nature.

Politics is never a victory, it's just the remorseless grinding forward of events.

Another of Cicero's maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity.

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.

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.

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.

Storytelling has a narcotic power.

I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.

If you go back, 'The Great Gatsby' would be a portrait of the rich and fortune made by business.

We say, 'The market plummets,' like it's some roaring creature.

What is leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretense that the decision was based on reason

There's nothing more interesting than the details of someone's life.

Down in the cellar the Gestapo were licensed to practice was the Ministry of Justice called 'heightened interrogation'. The rules had been drawn up by civilised men in warm offices and they stipulated the presence of a doctor.