Quotes from Robert Ludlum

The success of any trap lies in its fundamental simplicity. The reverse trap by the nature of its single complication must be swift and simpler still.

Hope is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is just fine as long as its contained.

Greater economic power will be in the hands of too few.

I start every book with something that outrages me. I'm outraged by the FBI, the CIA, and computers that seem to have catalogued our lives. Power too often is accompanied by irresponsibility.

I have always preferred conflict of individuals over the battle of extreme ideologies.

Summer nights held a special kind of loneliness that gave rise to strange imaginings. One walked the beach alone and thought too much.

When the old men kill themselves, the cities are dying.

Truth is neither joyful nor sad, neither good nor bad. It is simply truth.

If I haven't done badly, it's because I've become indispensable to too many like David Abbott. I have in my head a thousand facts they couldn't possibly recall. It's simply easier for them to place me where the questions are, where problems need solutions. (Alfred Gillette)

They lived with the intensity of two people aware that change would come. And when it came, it would come quickly; so there were things to talk about which could not be avoided any longer.

There is nothing in a crowded street more noticeable than a man running ? unless it is a woman.

The end did not justify the means, but justifiable means that brought about a fair and necessary conclusion were not to be dismissed.

Accountants and economists are natural enemies. One views trees, the other forests, and the visions are usually at odds, as they should be.

everything we knew, everything we felt!' 'Not quite everything,' he said, touching her cheek. 'I'm Jason to you, Bourne to me, because that's the name I was given, and have to use it because I don't have any other. But it's not mine.

You're on tenth base, I can't find you.

I mean, we're all trying to find out who the hell we are, aren't we?

The mind plays tricks. It rejects things until it thinks ? or something tells it ? that the remembering can be handled.

Wealth is relative to the amount of time one has to enjoy it.

Mindless, stupid men! Playing with the lives of other men

Strangers should meet in unfamiliar areas. It's comforting.

he didn't give a damn about being popular; he cared only about being right.

It's called obfuscation in the interest of deniability. You might say it's our lingua franca.

Wealth is relative to the amount of time one has to enjoy it. I wouldn't have five minutes.

You appear to be a mass of contradictions, Dr Washburn said. There's a subsurface violence almost always in control, but very much alive. There's also a pensiveness that seems painful for you, yet you rarely give vent to the anger that pain must provoke.