Robert Harris Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
-
“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.”
-- Robert Harris -
“Golf requires only a few simple Rules and Regulations to guide the players in the true nature of its sporting appeal. The spirit of the game is its own referee.”
-- Robert Harris -
“If one first gives himself to the Lord, all other giving is easy.”
-- Robert Harris -
“The financial world is at the cutting edge of high technology.”
-- Robert Harris -
“The true currency of life is time, not money, and we've all got a limited stock of that.”
-- Robert Harris -
“Working 14 hours a day until you're 55 and missing your kids growing up is not what I would consider a recipe for happiness.”
-- Robert Harris -
“You can't ever win the war on crime, or the war on terror. You can't repeal human nature.”
-- Robert Harris -
“For me, as I suspect for most people, there comes a point where you have enough. If you've got £20 million, why keep going until you've got £100 million or £1,000 million? Does anyone need another vast yacht or private jet or a house full of gold?”
-- Robert Harris -
“Humans have changed little over time. We think we've invented the modern world but they were making better speeches 2,000 years ago and grappling with issues of empire and terrorism.”
-- Robert Harris -
“To say she was my girlfriend was absurd: no one the wrong side of thirty has a girlfriend… I suppose I ought to have realize it’s ominous that forty thousand years of human language had failed to produce a word for our relationship.”
-- Robert Harris -
“What is leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretense that the decision was based on reason”
-- Robert Harris -
“Cicero smiled at us. 'The art of life is to deal with problems as they arise, rather than destory one's spirit by worrying about them too far in advance. Especially tonight.”
-- Robert Harris -
“To be brave, by definition, one has first to be afraid.”
-- Robert Harris -
“If you spend too long trying to avoid death, you will be dead in at least one way.”
-- Robert Harris -
“Another of Cicero's maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity.”
-- Robert Harris -
“It is perseverance, and not genius that takes a man to the top. Rome is full of unrecognized geniuses. Only perseverance enables you to move forward in the world.”
-- Robert Harris -
“Politics is never a victory, it's just the remorseless grinding forward of events.”
-- Robert Harris -
“Orwell has always been a huge influence on me.”
-- Robert Harris -
“First comes an idea. Then, characters begin to evolve out of the landscape of that idea. And then, finally, characters dominate: plot is simply a function of what these people might do or be. Everything has to flow from their personalities; otherwise it will not be emotionally engaging, or plausible.”
-- Robert Harris -
“Cicero most reminds me of Harold Wilson. Both men knew how to keep the show on the road.”
-- Robert Harris -
“Don't try to write too much in a single session. One thousand words a day is quite enough. Stop after about four or five hours.”
-- Robert Harris -
“Everyone thinks politics will just go on the way it is. I don't agree.”
-- Robert Harris -
“History is what we bring to it, not just the events themselves, but how we interpret those events.”
-- Robert Harris -
“I think it's very, very hard not to go slightly crazy if you're in the top in politics - especially if you're there for a long time.”
-- Robert Harris -
“I think that whenever a nation feels itself to be at is zenith, it starts to feel a creeping sense of anxiety.”
-- Robert Harris -
“I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.”
-- Robert Harris -
“I write as well as I can. I'm a journalist at heart, so it's the story that matters.”
-- Robert Harris -
“One cannot see any world leader who has got a grip on the financial markets these days. They're too big, too fast. I think that's quite scary.”
-- Robert Harris -
“My literary career was a fluke. Utterly unexpected.”
-- Robert Harris