Quotes from Robert Harris

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.

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.

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.

But clever people all make one mistake. They all think everyone else is stupid. And everyone isn't stupid. They just take a bit more time, that's all.

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.

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.

[Boxer is] the ultimate tool for the serious pro' that can't afford the time and patience to mess around with lesser products.

My greatest regret as a writer is that I've never been able to include as many jokes as I'd like.

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.

I've always just wanted to earn my living by writing. The best thing is to go into my study in the morning and stay there and put words together.

History is what we bring to it, not just the events themselves, but how we interpret those events.

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?

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.

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.

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.

I write as well as I can. I'm a journalist at heart, so it's the story that matters.

Writers and journalists tend to be simplistic about politics when, like all other areas of life, it's more complicated.

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.

I think that whenever a nation feels itself to be at is zenith, it starts to feel a creeping sense of anxiety.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Writers of fiction should stick to writing, not pop up on panel shows or as a talking head.