Ken Follett Quotes

Why do you have to be the same as the others? ...Most of them are stupid.

I wanted to be some kind of captain of industry. Then I wanted to be in advertising, and then I wanted to be a newspaper reporter.

She wanted to say 'I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage'.

I am very fond of Edith Wharton. She's quite high brow but also a great storyteller. My favorite is 'The House of Mirth.' I also like 'The Reef.

I went and looked at one of these great cathedrals one day, and I was blown away by it. From there I became interested in how cathedrals were built, and from there I became interested in the society that built the medieval cathedral. It occurred to me at some point that the story of the building of a cathedral could be a great popular novel.

An awful lot of thriller writers write women rather badly. So just doing it OK gets a lot of credit.

Most of my stories have some basis in fact.

My favorite period is World War II, and I'm in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era.

One of the hardest things for me, now that I'm famous, is finding people who can read my stuff and give me an honest critique.

She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly.

What she needs,' Tom said aloud 'is a husband.' Agnes said crisply, 'Well, she can't have mine.

Having faith in God did not mean sitting back and doing nothing. It meant believing you would find success if you did your best honestly and energetically.

I aim to be translucent, so you don't notice the words, just their meaning. I haven't much insight into people's motivations.

Man who betrayed you once would betray you twice.

There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.

You never know," Jack said speculatively. "There may come a time when savages like William Hamleigh aren't in power; when the laws protect the ordinary people instead of enslaving them; when the king makes peace instead of war. Think of that - a time when towns in England don't need walls!

He had been granted his life's wish-but conditionally.

Hunger is the best seasoning.

In my books, women often solve the problem. Even if the woman is not the hero, she's a strong character. She does change the plot. She'll often rescue the male character from some situation.

It was an odd thing to do, to stand in a street in the hope of seeing someone who hardly knew him, but he did not want to move.

There is no point in asking a man a question until you have established whether he has any reason to lie to you.

I have quite a few different Bibles. Having rejected my parents' religion, I still think the King James Bible is the most important work of literature in English. None of us can help being influenced by it.

Trusting someone was like holding a little water in your cupped hands - it was so easy to spill the water, and you could never get it back.

It was the most romantic plane ever made.

I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have.

The most expensive part of building is the mistakes.

Fear could paralyse. Action was the antidote.

We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary.

I enjoy learning technical details.

President Wilson says a leader must treat public opinion the way a sailor deals with the wind, using it to blow the ship in one direction or another, but never trying to go directly against it.

The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying.

In both cases, weakness and scruples had defeated strength and ruthlessness.

It was an odd relationship, but then she was an extraordinary woman: a prioress who doubted much of what the church taught; an acclaimed healer who rejected medicine as practised by physicians; and a nun who made enthusiastic love to her man whenever she could get away with it. If I wanted a normal relationship, Merthin told himself, I should have picked a normal girl.

World War II is the greatest drama in human history, the biggest war ever and a true battle of good and evil. I imagine writers will continue to get stories from it, and readers will continue to love them, for many more years.

Culture clash is terrific drama.

I use a professional researcher in New York who does all the legwork, all that stuff which would take me days and weeks of calling, waiting for people to call back.

When you're thinking, please remember this: excessive pride is a familiar sin, but a man may just as easily frustrate the will of God through excessive humility.

She looked at his young face, so full of concern and tenderness; and she remembered why she had run away from everyone else and sought solitude here. She yearned to kiss him, and she saw the answering longing in his eyes. Every fiber of her body told her to throw herself into his arms, but she knew what she had to do. She wanted to say, I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage; but instead she said: "I think I'm going to marry Alfred.

I want to tell a story that makes the reader always want to see what will happen next.

When I'm writing a woman character, I don't think, 'What would a woman do?' I just think, 'What would this character do in this situation?

There is a real connection between Philosopy and fiction.

But the lesson of Abraham's story is that God demands the best we have to offer, that which is most precious to us.

The thriller is the most popular literary genre of the 20th century.

What news? There's nothing to tell. I'm a nun.

you should first follow the plow if you want to dance the harvest jig.

Thrillers have been traditionally very masculine books; the women characters often rather decorative.

I imagined it. I wrote it. But I guess I never thought I'd see it.

Knotty theological questions are the least worrying of problems to me. Why? Because they will be resolved in the hereafter, and meanwhile they can be safely shelved.