71 Quotes by Caleb Carr

People would rather be deceived than have the truth cause them anxiety

So if it seems that some of what I'll have to say in the pages to come doesn't reflect the mellowing of age, that's only because I've never found that life and memories respond to time the way that tobacco does.

The definition of terrorism is killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation.

Gideon is unaware of it; he's grown up in it, and accepts the shortcomings until -- it's sort of a typical Everyman situation -- you accept the shortcomings until you get shoved up against an uncomfortable wall by them and have to look at them. And that's what happens to him. It's not a voluntary process.

I haven't always done things this way. It's the nature of the two books. They have been so consuming that I end up living inside them.

In rooting around for something to grab onto, I latched onto the past and people in the past who I felt were strong, actively ethical characters.

People would rather be deceived than have the truth cause them anxiety.

I’m a fairly ascetic person. And I do most of my writing at night. You don’t get distracted, your brain goes into what you are writing about, into the world you’re writing about, rather than into the world you’re in.

She has that quality, does the Hudson, as I imagine all great rivers do: the deep, abiding sense that those activities what take place on shore among human beings are of the moment, passing, and aren’t the stories by way of which the greater tale of this planet will, in the end, be told.