236 Quotes by Robert Harris

But only a fool sails into combat with nature.

And so we drifted towards calamity. At times, Cicero was shrewd enough to see it. “Can a constitution devised centuries ago to replace a monarchy, and based upon a citizens’ militia, possibly hope to run an empire whose scope is beyond anything ever dreamed of by its framers? Or must the existence of standing armies and the influx of inconceivable wealth inevitably destroy our democratic system?

It’s when you’ve stopped writing and are doing other things, especially when you’re asleep, that the real work is done.

It is perfectly legitimate to write novels which are essentially prose poems, but in the end, I think, a novel is like a car, and if you buy a car and grow flowers in it, you’re forgetting that the car is designed to take you somewhere else.

I feel as if I have walked into a mirrored room and glimpsed myself from an unfamiliar angle for the first time. Is that really what I look like? Is that who I am?

I write as well as I can. I’m a journalist at heart, so it’s the story that matters.

What starts as gratitude quickly becomes dependency and ends as entitlement.

Any man who is truly worthy must consider himself unworthy.

The Greek philosopher Epictetus recognised this two thousand years ago when he wrote: ‘What disturbs and alarms man are not the things but his opinions and fancies about the things.