236 Quotes by Robert Harris

Power brings a man many luxuries, but a clean pair of hands is seldom among them.

And the great thing about money is that it doesn’t matter when you harvest it. It’s an all-year crop.

Of all human activities, writing is the one for which it is easiest to find excuses not to begin – the desk’s too big, the desk’s too small, there’s too much noise, there’s too much quiet, it’s too hot, too cold, too early, too late. I had learned over the years to ignore them all, and simply to start.

A book unwritten is a delightful universe of infinite possibilities. Set down one word, however, and it immediately becomes earthbound. Set down one sentence and it’s halfway to being just like every other bloody book that’s ever been written.

Suicide leaves everyone feeling guilty.

Outwardly, I hope, I wear my usual mask of detachment, even irony, for there has never been a situation,however dire, even this one, that did not strike me as containing at least some element of the human comedy.

Fear is historically the strongest emotion in economics. Remember FDR in the Great Depression? It's the most famous quote in financial history: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." In fact fear is probably the strongest human emotion, period. Who ever woke up at four in the morning because they were feeling half?

People will perish, but books are immortal. (Pompeii)

Brave words. Easy to write when one was young and death was still skulking over a distant hill somewhere... - Pg. 82