I like to take people you wouldn't really think people would write novels about: an aqueduct engineer, a code-breaker, a hedge-fund manager. It's in those sorts of lives that I find more fascination than in a CIA operative or a… — Robert Harris Copy Share Image
The financial markets tend to be just a backdrop for a novel, for a heist or something that isn't necessarily integral to it. On the whole, I don't think the financial world has been well served by novels. — Robert Harris Copy Share Image
“Men mistook measurement for understanding. And they always had to put themselves at the center of everything. That was their greatest conceit. The earth… — Robert Harris Copy Share Image
“He felt more human with his boots on. A man can face the world with something on his feet.” — Robert Harris Copy Share Image
Cicero most reminds me of Harold Wilson. Both men knew how to keep the show on the road. — Robert Harris Copy Share Image
“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… — Robert Harris Copy Share Image
“Nature has granted man no better gift than the shortness of life. The senses grow dull, the limbs are numb, sight, bearing, gait, even… — Robert Harris Copy Share Image
“A crock of shit,” Rick had called it. But actually this was worse. Shit, to quote Gore Vidal, has its own integrity. This was… — Robert Harris Copy Share Image
“... unfortunately, freedom alone is not enough, by far. If there is a shortage of bread, a shortage of butter and fats, a shortage… — Robert Harris Copy Share Image
It is perseverance, and not genius that takes a man to the top. Rome is full of unrecognized geniuses. Only perseverance enables you to… — Robert Harris Copy Share Image
“No one can really claim to know politics properly until he has stayed up all night writing a speech for delivery the following day.… — Robert Harris Copy Share Image
