Quotes from Ken Follett

Era fácil pronunciar palabras valientes en la oscuridad. La luz del día podía contar una historia muy diferente.

In the struggle for female equality, Maud reflected, sometimes you had to fight women as well as men.

A man thought he could fly, so he jumped off the top of a ten-storey building, and as he fell past the fifth floor, flapping his arms uselessly in the air, he was heard to say: So far, so good.

A Woodrow Wilson no lo amedrentaba la guerra. Su obra de teatro favorita era Enrique V, de Shakespeare, y le gustaba la cita: Si es pecado codiciar el honor, soy el mayor de todos los pecadores.

We have never made a gain, in civil rights, without pressure

The sight of them all made Caris marvel: each individual had a different life, every one of them rich and complex, with dramas in the past and challenges in the future, happy memories and secret sorrows, and a crowd of friends and enemies and loved ones.

He did not share his father's belief that the Germans were a superior type of human, but on the other hand he could see that German mastery of Europe would be no bad thing. The French had many brilliant talents—cooking, painting, fashion, wine—but they were not good at government. French officials saw themselves as some kind of aristocracy, and thought it was perfectly all right to

Ma and Pa had taught their sons to keep themselves fresh by bathing at least once a year.

You didn't fail me. You fed me and took care of me ... But there was something more important than all that, he thought. What Tom had given him was nothing so commonplace as food and shelter. Tom had given him something unique, something no other man had to give, something even his own father could not have given him: something that was a passion, a skill, an art, and a way of life. You gave me a cathedral...

It had been a morning of vivid images: the man-made streams, the rats in the butchers' shops, the stacks of new-minted silver pennies, and then the woman's private parts. For a while, he knew, those pictures would come back to him to unsettle his meditations.

The kiss of peace, which was part of the ritual of the mass, was the symbol of trust, and no contract, from a wedding to a truce, was complete without it.

Her breasts had changed, too. He remembered when they had stuck out from her chest as if they were weightless, the nipples pointing up. Then, when she was pregnant, they had become even bigger, and the nipples had grown larger. Now they were lower and softer, and they swung delightfully from side to side when she walked. He had loved them through all their changes. He wondered what they would be like when she was old.

How exciting to be at the center of power." "It is exciting, but strangely enough it doesn't feel like the center of power. In a democracy the president is subject to the voters." "But surely he doesn't just do what the public wants." "Not exactly, no. President Wilson says a leader must treat public opinion the way a sailor deals with the wind, using it to blow the ship in one direction or another, but never trying to go directly against it.

Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made this century, to the proposition that"—he had gone formal, but now he reverted to plain language—"race has no place in American life or law.

Around most of its coast the cliffs rise out of the cold sea without the courtesy of a beach. Angered by this rudeness the waves pound on the rock in impotent rage: a ten-thousand-year fit of bad temper that the island ignores with impunity.

The Bible says, 'If any would not work, neither should he eat.' Saint Paul wrote that, in Second Thessalonians, chapter three, verse ten

It was going to be difficult for Maud to get out of the house alone. Like all upper-class ladies, she was not supposed to go anywhere unescorted. Men pretended this was because they were so concerned to protect their women, but in truth it was a means of control. No doubt it would remain until women won the vote.

Perhaps the savages will always be in control, Phillip said gloomily. Perhaps greed will always outweigh wisdom in the councils of the mighty; perhaps fear will always overcome compassion in the mind of a man with a sword in his hand.

Nowadays he avoided political discussions with outsiders. They usually had easy answers: send all the Mexicans home, put Hells Angels in the army, castrate the queers. The greater their ignorance, the stronger their opinions.

She had always liked what Scarlett O'Hara said in Gone with the Wind: I'll think about it tomorrow. Not anymore.

The degradation to which you subject others comes back, sooner or later, to haunt you, Maud thought.

A woman's life was a house of closed doors: she could not be an apprentice, she could not study at the university, she could not be a priest or a physician, or shoot a bow or fight with a sword, and she could not marry without submitting herself to the tyranny of her husband.

No se puede encarcelar a la oposición y seguir fingiendo que crees en la libertad.

When you're thinking, please remember this: excessive pride is a familiar sin, but a man may just as easily frustrate the will of God through excessive humility.