Quotes from Robert Harris

Problems do not queue up outside a statesman's door, waiting to be solved in an orderly fashion, chapter by chapter, as the books would have us believe; instead they crowd in en masse, demanding attention.

war was long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

was yet another lesson to me in politics—an occupation which, if it is to be pursued successfully, demands the most extraordinary reserves of self-discipline, a quality that the naive often mistake for hypocrisy.

La ley es tan cara! -comentó Clodio con una sonrisa-. El pobre Catilina ha tenido que vender las reliquias de la familia para poder estar seguro de la justicia. Realmente, es un escándalo. No sé cómo se las arregla la gente.

what he wanted most, was godly men, men of faith and discipline, who were prepared if needs be to die: 'For the man who is willing to die will always be your master.

si alguien me preguntara: «Tiro, ¿por qué te saltas un período tan largo de la vida de Cicerón?», me vería obligado a contestarle: «Amigo mío, porque esos fueron años de felicidad, y hay pocos asuntos cuya lectura resulte más aburrida que la felicidad»

There is nothing more calculated to expose a person's true character than enforced proximity

Is that constitutional?" "I don't know, and frankly at this stage, what does it matter? Either this will work and everyone will be too relieved afterwards to quibble, or it won't and they will be too busy trying on gas masks to care.

This combination of incompetence and accidents led to increasing public hostility toward chemical weapons. After all, it was argued, if a few pounds of nerve agent was sufficient to kill 6,000 sheep, what would be the consequence of a full-scale accident?

The only thing you can be sure of, Herr March, is that - whoever wins - still standing when the smoke of battle clears will be the banks of the cantons of Switzerland.

Atticus's rule was that while he would never lend a book, any of his friends were free whenever they liked to come up and read or even make their own copies. And it was here, beneath a head of Aristotle, that we found Atticus reclining that afternoon, dressed in the loose white tunic of a Greek, and reading, if I remember rightly, a volume of Kyriai doxai, the principal doctrines of Epicurus. He came straight to the point. "I was at dinner last

Looking out from his window, he felt he had been granted a glimpse of a great truth, one that had been whispering at his conscience for many years: that God was not to be pressed into service merely to suit the needs of men, however righteous they believed their cause to be; that such presumption was itself a sin. He felt both despair and a bitter vindication.

there were tiny swastikas on the taps. (There was no escaping the Führer's aesthetic, thought Hartmann, not even when one took a shit.)

Cromwell had the power, but to what end? Each time he tried to restore Parliament, it antagonised him, and he dissolved it. The army was divided, the country sullen. He lived in a trap of his own making.

It is my first lesson in the cabalistic power of "secret intelligence": two words that can make otherwise sane men abandon their reason and cavort like idiots.

What a day in prospect: the sort of day one waded through with no aim higher than to reach the other end intact.

rising up starkly over the snowy plain, and that the plebs were flocking out

No one who follows their conscience ever does wrong, Your Eminence. The consequences may not turn out as we intend; it may prove in time that we made a mistake. But that is not the same as being wrong. The only guide to a person's actions can ever be their conscience, for it is in our conscience that we most clearly hear the voice of God.

Learned minds can still believe wicked things, especially when their own interests are at stake.

He had learned well from Cicero the tricks of political campaigning: keep your speeches short, remember names, tell jokes, put on a show; above all, render an issue, however complex, into a story anyone can grasp.

He felt a sudden exultation in his singularity. Well, damn the world for its superstition.

Man was born in sin. He struggled. He erred. He fell.

Surely the gods, given their immortal powers, should be able to find more articulate means of communication than snowflakes. Why not send us a letter?

The Hitler diaries affair is a monument to the cock-up theory of history.