Robert Harris

Suicide leaves everyone feeling guilty.

People perish. Books are immortal.

The destination of the journey could not be altered, only the manner in which one approached it - whether one chose to walk erect or to be dragged complaining through the dust.

...he possessed for attractive form of courage: bravery of a nervous man. After all, any rash fool can be a hero if he sets no value on his life or hasn't the wit to appreciate the danger. But to understand the risks, perhaps even to flinch at first, but then summon the strength to face them down--that is my opinion is the most commendable for of value...

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__ matter when you harvest it. It__ an all-year crop.

A ghost who has only a lay knowledge of the subject will be able to keep asking the same questions as the lay reader, and will therefore open up the potential readership of the book to a much wider audience.

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__ ominous that forty thousand years of human language had failed to produce a word for our relationship.

And then to my surprise in one of them I discovered the original manuscript of On Friendship. Puzzled, I unrolled it, thinking I must have brought it with me by mistake. But when I saw that Cicero had copied out at the top of the roll in his shaking hand a quotation from the text, on the importance of having friends, I realised it was a parting gift: If a man ascended into heaven and gazed upon the whole workings of the universe and the beauty of the stars, the marvellous sight would give him no joy if he had to keep it to himself. And yet, if only there had been someone to describe the spectacle to, it would have filled him with delight. Nature abhors solitude.

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

I am sure future historians will say the biggest and most astonishing change in politics has been the embracing of all the tenets of Thatcherism by the party of Keir Hardie: trade union legislation, Europe, the replacement of Trident, 10 per cent tax for people who have made millions from their companies.

Having the urge to write a novel, especially if you've yet to be published, is like having a medical condition impossible to mention in polite company - it's a relief simply to know there are fellow-sufferers out there.

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.

We live in an age of great jitteriness in the financial markets. And there's no doubt at all, I think, that the volume of computer-traded stocks has helped contribute to that.

It implies a slight failure as a writer that you are reduced to being a ghostwriter for the money.

Social mores change all the time. In the mid-1970s, it would've been astonishing, say, to see two men holding hands in the streets. And the attitude to having a fling with a girl, or whatever, was quite different then.

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__ halfway to being just like every other bloody book that__ ever been written.

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