236 Quotes by Robert Harris

To choose one's victims, to prepare one's plans minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed ... there is nothing sweeter in the world. - J. V. Stalin

The foundations of Empire are often occasions of woe; their dismemberment, always.

He glanced around the reading room and closed his eyes, trying to keep hold of the past for a minute longer, a fattening and hungover middle-aged historian in a black corduroy suit.

Kelso's hangover had gone, to be replaced by that familiar phase of post-alcoholic euphoria - always in the past, his most productive time of day - a feeling that alone was enough to make getting drunk worthwhile.

Push out a bayonet. If it strikes fat, push deeper. If it strikes iron, pull back for another day.

Violence is Inevitable.

I lay aside the papers. Really, it is beyond hypocrisy; it is beyond even lying: it has become a psychosis.

It was an unnatural time to be awake, ... It meant nothing good. He associated it with emergency, bereavement, conspiracy, flight; the sad skulk away at the end of a one-night affair.

If one tries to think about history, it seems to me - it's like looking at a range of mountains. And the first time you see them, they look one way. But then time changes, the pattern of light shifts. Maybe you've moved slightly, your perspective has changed. The mountains are the same, but they look very different.