Quotes from Ken Follett

Chaperoning rules had relaxed since the outbreak of war. It was no longer scandalous for a single woman to go out unescorted in the daytime.

there's more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people. p890

A family of Jews were showing their tickets at the head of the gangplank. All Jews wanted to go to America, in Grigori's experience. They had even more reason than he did. In Russia there were laws forbidding them to own land, to enter the civil service, to be army officers, and countless other prohibitions. They could not live where they liked, and there were quotas limiting the number who could go to universities. It was a miracle any of them made a living.

What we did in that momentous year of 1558 caused political strife, revolt, civil war, and invasion. There were times, in later years, when in the depths of despair I would wonder whether it had been worth it. The simple idea that people should be allowed to worship as they wished caused more suffering than the ten plagues of Egypt. So, if I had known then what I know now, would I have done the same? Hell yes.

Until August the Luftwaffe had raided only ports and airfields. Fitz had explained, in an unusually candid moment, that the British were not so scrupulous: the government had approved bombing of targets in German cities back in May, and all through June and July the RAF had dropped bombs on women and children in their homes. The German public had been enraged by this and demanded retaliation. The Blitz was the result.

Repress those who complain, rather than address their discontents.

If God could not forgive lascivious priests, there would be very few clergy in heaven.

I could weep for all the innocent women and children who were burned and maimed in London—and it doesn't help at all to know that German women and children are suffering the same.

Yo creo en Dios, pero no creo que a Él le importe que la gente sea protestante, católica, musulmana o budista.

Men were the only animals that slaughtered their own kind by the million, and turned the landscape into a waste of shell craters and barbed wire. Perhaps the human race would wipe itself out completely, and leave the world to the birds and trees

Every catastrophe begins with a little problem that doesn't get fixed.

Este hombre te ha dado de comer, te ha vestido y te ha amado de forma incondicional durante tres décadas. Si la palabra «padre» tiene algún significado, entonces tu padre es él.

Over the next three or four years you'll do things you'll remember later with deep embarrassment. But when you're old you'll wish you'd done all of them twice.

When Ethel said we should give everyone free education and free health care and unemployment insurance, I told her she was living in a dream world. But now look: everything she campaigned for has come to pass, and yet England is still England.

In the old days you wouldn't discuss politics at all." "If you don't take an interest, then what happens is your fault.

We never forgive those we've wronged.

We'll see, Grigori thought as he drifted off to sleep. Brave words came easily in the dark. Daylight might tell a different story.

He had a taste for wild, spreading, disorderly things: high mountains,aged oaks,and Aliena's hair.

There had been a wonderful atmosphere of liberation and camaraderie. The Russians hated it.

For reasons no one understood, musicians were good at decoding.

Women wanted a new deal, and they expected him to know, without being told, what the deal was, and to agree to it without negotiation.

All his life he would cherish the memory of an endless caravan of camels alongside the railway line, the laden beasts plodding patiently through the snow, ignoring the twentieth century as it hurtled past them in a clash of iron and a shriek of steam.

sentiments which Feliks had already come to recognise as being characteristic of The Times, which would have described the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as strong rulers who could do nothing but good for the stability of the international situation.

International politics is like a glass. Aggressive moves by either side pour water in. The overflow is war." Dimka