Best 121 quotes of Ken Follett on MyQuotes

A baby was like a revolution, Grigori thought: you could start one, but you could not control how it would turn out.

After a certain point, most people, including editors, will tell you everything you do is great.

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

A very good editor is almost a collaborator.

But desperate people find courage.

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

Culture clash is terrific drama.

Ethel said: "Lloyd, there's someone here you may remember-" Daisy could not restrain herself. She ran to Lloyd and threw herself into his arms. She hugged him. She looked into his green eyes, then kissed his brown cheeks and his broken nose and then his mouth. "I love you, Lloyd," she sad madly. "I love you, I love you, I love you." "I love you, too, Daisy," he said. Behind her, Daisy heard Ethel's wry voice. "You do remember, I see.

Everybody takes what they life from the teachings of the church, and ignores the parts that don't suit them.

Fear could paralyse. Action was the antidote.

For success, the author must make the reader care about the destiny of the principals, and sustain this anxiety, or suspense, for about 100,000 words.

Hard work should be rewarded by good food.

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.

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

His aim was the glory of God, but the glory of Philip pleased him too.

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 could fall for you in a heartbeat

I don't think there's any great mystery to writing female characters, so long as you talk to them. If you lived in a monastery and never met any women, maybe it would be difficult.

I enjoy learning technical details.

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.

I like reading history, and actually most authors enjoy the research part because it is, after all, easier than writing.

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.

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

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.

I read mostly fiction, a lot of 19th-century novels.

I started writing stories in my spare time.

It's great that in the German language I've sold almost 30 million books. Isn't that amazing?

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.

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.

It was the most romantic plane ever made.

I’ve worked with volunteers before,” he began. “It’s important not to… not to treat them like servants. We may feel that they are laboring to obtain a heavenly reward, and should therefore work harder than they would for money; but they don’t necessarily take that attitude. They feel they’re working for nothing, and doing a great kindness to us thereby; and if we seem ungrateful they will work slowly and make mistakes. It will be best to rule them with a light touch.

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.

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.

James Bond is quite serious about his drinks and clothing and cigarettes and food and all that sort of thing. There is nothing wry or amused about James Bond.

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.

Movies have influenced all writers, not just thriller writers.

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

Nevertheless, the book gave Jack a feeling he had never had before, that the past was like a story, in which one thing led to another, and the world was not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that could be comprehended.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The boundary between philosophy and fiction is not as clear cut as you may think and the two definitely interact.

The CIA's research program is described in a book called "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate.

The duck swallows the worm, the fox kills the duck, the men shoot the fox, and the devil hunts the men.

The most expensive part of building is the mistakes.

There is a real connection between Philosopy and fiction.

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

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.