Ken Follett Quotes

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

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

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.

When you've lost everything, you've got nothing to lose.

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 CIA's research program is described in a book called "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate."

Trusting someone was like holding a little water in your cupped hands - it was so easy to spill the water, and you could never get it back.

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

In my books, women often solve the problem. Even if the woman is not the hero, she's a strong character. She does change the plot. She'll often rescue the male character from some situation.

In both cases, weakness and scruples had defeated strength and ruthlessness.

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

For success, the author must make the reader care about the destiny of the principals, and sustain this anxiety, or suspense, for about 100,000 words.

Hard work should be rewarded by good food.

Proportion is the heart of beauty.

The most expensive part of building is the mistakes.

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

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.

We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary.

She looked at his young face, so full of concern and tenderness; and she remembered why she had run away from everyone else and sought solitude here. She yearned to kiss him, and she saw the answering longing in his eyes. Every fiber of her body told her to throw herself into his arms, but she knew what she had to do. She wanted to say, I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage; but instead she said: "I think I'm going to marry Alfred.

you should first follow the plow if you want to dance the harvest jig.

I use a professional researcher in New York who does all the legwork, all that stuff which would take me days and weeks of calling, waiting for people to call back.

Fear could paralyse. Action was the antidote.

But the lesson of Abraham's story is that God demands the best we have to offer, that which is most precious to us.

Man who betrayed you once would betray you twice.

I’ve worked with volunteers before,” he began. “It’s important not to… not to treat them like servants. We may feel that they are laboring to obtain a heavenly reward, and should therefore work harder than they would for money; but they don’t necessarily take that attitude. They feel they’re working for nothing, and doing a great kindness to us thereby; and if we seem ungrateful they will work slowly and make mistakes. It will be best to rule them with a light touch.

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.

A very good editor is almost a collaborator.

But desperate people find courage.

I don't think there's any great mystery to writing female characters, so long as you talk to them. If you lived in a monastery and never met any women, maybe it would be difficult.

There is a real connection between Philosopy and fiction.

It was the most romantic plane ever made.

I could fall for you in a heartbeat

Knotty theological questions are the least worrying of problems to me. Why? Because they will be resolved in the hereafter, and meanwhile they can be safely shelved.

Hunger is the best seasoning.

We’re all good when it suits us, he used to say: that doesn’t count. It’s when you want so badly to do something wrong—when you’re about to make a fortune from a dishonest deal, or kiss the lovely lips of your neighbor’s wife, or tell a lie to get yourself out of terrible trouble—that’s when you need the rules. Your integrity is like a sword, he would say: you shouldn’t wave it until you’re about to put it to the test.

Culture clash is terrific drama.

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.

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

I went and looked at one of these great cathedrals one day, and I was blown away by it. From there I became interested in how cathedrals were built, and from there I became interested in the society that built the medieval cathedral. It occurred to me at some point that the story of the building of a cathedral could be a great popular novel.

My favorite period is World War II, and I'm in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era.

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.

Thrillers have been traditionally very masculine books; the women characters often rather decorative.

The thriller is the most popular literary genre of the 20th century.

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.

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.

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.

There is no point in asking a man a question until you have established whether he has any reason to lie to you.

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.

You see, all that I ever held dear has been taken from me," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "And when you've lost everything-" Her facade began to crumble, and her voice broke, but she made herself carry on. "When you've lost everything, you've got nothing to lose.

Why did people manufacture trouble when there was already so much of it in the world?