Eric Ambler famous quotes

Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through it
-- Eric Ambler

#Lying #Bullshit #Way

The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet.
-- Eric Ambler

#Important #Bullets #Shots

Yet, when these facts are seen side by side with other facts in the case, it is difficult not to become lost in superstitious awe. Their very absurdity seems to prohibit the use of the words 'chance' and 'coincidence.' For the sceptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman Law, it is administered with sub-human inefficiency.
-- Eric Ambler

#Law #Facts #Sides

Reality is always so obstructive.
-- Eric Ambler

#Reality

Good' did not triumph. 'Evil' did not triumph. The two resolved, destroyed each other and created new 'evils', new 'goods' which slew each other in their turn.
-- Eric Ambler

#Two #Evil #Triumph

In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner.
-- Eric Ambler

#Men #Civilization #Political

A person who searched rooms, brandished pistols, dangled promises of half a million franc fees for nameless services and then wrote instructions to Polish spies might reasonably be regarded with suspicion. But suspicion of what?
-- Eric Ambler

#Promise #Spy #Might

International business may conduct its operations with scraps of paper, but the ink it uses is human blood.
-- Eric Ambler

#Blood #Paper #May

For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency.
-- Eric Ambler

#Law #Should #Skeptic

Could man be drunk for ever       With liquor, love, or fights, Lief should I rouse at morning       And lief lie down of nights. But men at whiles are sober       And think by fits and starts, And if they think, they fasten       Their hands upon their hearts.

White in the moon the long road lies, The moon stands blank above; White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love. Still hangs the hedge without a gust, Still, still the shadows stay: My feet upon the moonlit dust Pursue the ceaseless way. The world is round, so travellers tell, And straight through reach the track, Trudge on, trudge on, 'twill all be well, The way will guide one back. But ere the circle homeward hies Far, far must it remove: White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love.

I'm just giving you some spiel, the ludicrous plot of a novel, a story I invented to touch your heart—one-third bullshit, one-third booze, and one-third genuine tenderness, you know the kind of thing.

Do you sometimes wish you could fast-forward a week? You know something bad's coming up, and you know you'll get through it, but the prospect just makes you feel sick. I worried for about thirty minutes, and though I knew there was no point in doing so, I could feel my anxiety twisting me up in a knot. 'Bullshit,' I told myself stoutly. 'This is utter bullshit.

It is often wonderful how putting down on paper a clear statement of a case helps one to see, not perhaps the way out, but the way in.

The only way to write is well and how you do it is your own damn business.

One can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it.

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

How can we say nobody's perfect if there is no perfect to compare to? Perfection implies that there really is a right and wrong way to be. And what type of perfection is the best type? Moral perfection? Aesthetic? Physiological? Mental?

She didn't know then that life has a way of backing you into a corner. You make your choices when you're far too young to understand their implications, and with each choice you make the field of possibility narrows. You choose a career and other careers are lost to you. You choose a mate and commit to loving no other.