Quotes from Ken Follett

She wanted to say 'I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage'.

I wanted to be some kind of captain of industry. Then I wanted to be in advertising, and then I wanted to be a newspaper reporter.

Most of my stories have some basis in fact.

After a certain point, most people, including editors, will tell you everything you do is great.

World War II is the greatest drama in human history, the biggest war ever and a true battle of good and evil. I imagine writers will continue to get stories from it, and readers will continue to love them, for many more years.

Movies have influenced all writers, not just thriller writers.

The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying.

There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.

I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have.

It's great that in the German language I've sold almost 30 million books. Isn't that amazing?

James Bond is quite serious about his drinks and clothing and cigarettes and food and all that sort of thing. There is nothing wry or amused about James Bond.

I enjoy learning technical details.

Having faith in God did not mean sitting back and doing nothing. It meant believing you would find success if you did your best honestly and energetically.

The most expensive part of building is the mistakes.

She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly.

Nevertheless, the book gave Jack a feeling he had never had before, that the past was like a story, in which one thing led to another, and the world was not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that could be comprehended.

She wanted to say 'I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage'...

Why do you have to be the same as the others? ...Most of them are stupid.

The duck swallows the worm, the fox kills the duck, the men shoot the fox, and the devil hunts the men.

A baby was like a revolution, Grigori thought: you could start one, but you could not control how it would turn out.

The greater their ignorance, the stronger their opinions.

Why was it, Lloyd wondered, that the people who wanted to destroy everything good about their country were the quickest to wave the national flag?

Hunger is the best seasoning.

I imagined it. I wrote it. But I guess I never thought I'd see it.