Best 54 quotes of Jeffrey Archer on MyQuotes

Actually, Sydney is my second favourite city on earth, I love Sydney, but this is the greatest.

And I did wonder - because it's now three years ago since I left prison - whether there would come a time when I would forget it, or it would be in the past as anything else might be - no, it's there every day of my life.

Are parents always more ambitious for their children than they are for themselves?

A strong man who has known power all his life may lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength.

At the end of my trial, I was rather hoping the judge would send me to Australia for the rest of my life.

A work of art is worth what someone will pay for it.

Birth is life's first lottery ticket.

But I certainly made mistakes, for which I regret, I think most human beings in their lifetime make mistakes, mine ended up in two years prison - two very remarkable years from which I learnt a lot.

But the thing I felt most strongly about, and put at the end of one of the prison diaries, was education.

Exclusive will not be published in book format.

Energy plus talent and you are a king, energy and no talent and you are still a prince, talent and no energy and you are a pauper

I do greatly admire Australian artists.

I feel I have had a very interesting life, but I am rather hoping there is still more to come. I still haven't captained the England cricket team, or sung at Carnegie Hall!

If you make a deal with a fool, don't be surprised when they act foolishly.

I have discovered with advancing years that few things are entirely black or white, but more often different shades of grey.

I learnt a lot about myself, I learnt a lot about other people and the problems they have. If I was lucky enough to live to a hundred, how I will feel about two per cent of my life being that way, I don't know.

I'm not taking any interest in politics. I'm not involved in politics in any way. My life is in writing now.

I'm passionate again about writing. This is important to me; it's got to be the comeback book.

I put £150,000 into the stage production of Grease and have got back £1.5 million so far. It has been a fantastic success.

I think my attitude to human beings has changed since leaving prison.

I think when you've lost an election by 179, there's going to be a period of time after eighteen years in government when you can't do anything right, and people just kick you for the sake of it, will never admit they voted Conservative.

It is often spur-of-the-moment decisions, sometimes made by others, that can change our whole lives.

It's one of the ironies of mountaineering,' said Young, 'that grown men are happy to spend months preparing for a climb, weeks rehearsing and honing their skills, and at least a day attempting to reach the summit. And then, having achieved their goal, they spend just a few moments enjoying the experience, along with one or two equally certifiable companions who have little in common other than wanting to do it all again, but a little higher.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

Never be frightened by those you assume have more talent than you do, because in the end energy will prevail. My formula is: energy plus talent and you are a king; energy and no talent and you are still a prince; talent and no energy and you are a pauper.

No time like the present

Some people standby you in your darkest hour while others walk away; only a select few march towards you and become even closer friends.

The discipline required for athletics carried through to writing. You call it obsession. I call it discipline. By the way, I see nothing wrong with that.

The popularity of an individual in life often only manifests itself in death.

The worst moment of any campaign is waiting for the sun to rise on the morning of the battle

Time spent on preparation is seldom wasted.

War and Peace maddens me because I didn't write it myself, and worse, I couldn't.

We all make mistakes but one has to move on.

we all suffer in our different ways from being prisoners of birth.

Well I certainly have learned and I hope I'm moving on and certainly two years of prison was a terrible punishment.

Well I think after leaving prison, and having written three diaries about life in prison, it became a sort of a new challenge to write another novel, to write a new novel.

What I have found is that real friends stand by you.

When a book comes out I wonder if one person will buy it. It's agony. Of course it's stupid, but it's agony.

Whenever you analyse anyone who has had any success and they're in the headlines, you will find they are human and make mistakes. I'm certainly that and I've made a lot of mistakes.

When I was deputy chairman I could travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh without leaving Tory land. In a two-week period I covered every constituency in which we had an MP. There were 14. Now we have only one. We appear to have given up.

When I was three, I wanted to be four. When I was four, I wanted to be prime minister.

While there may not be a book in every one of us, there is so often a damned good short story.

With torture ,as with making love, foreplay is the all important factor

..each ministry has an allocation of money to spend on projects agreed to by the government. Every Secretary of State is acutely aware that his tenure of office maybe very short, so he picks out a major contract for himself from the many available. It's the one way to ensure a pension for life if the government is changed overnight or the minister simply loses his job.

How was it possible that he could handle Swiss bankers, West End impresarios, senior partners and seasoned solicitors, but was a quivering wreck in the presence of this man?

I never advise friends to put money in anything,. said Danny. 'It's a no-win situation - if they make a profit they forget that it was you who recommended it, and if they make a loss they never stop reminding you. My only advise would be not to gamble what you can't afford, and never to risk an amount that might cause you to lose a night's sleep

..it must make sense to try & sign up the minister's man, who in the end is the one person who can ensure that you will be awarded the contract. The system seems to work well, & as long as a minister deals only with reputable international firms & doesn't become too greedy, no one complains. Fail to observe either of those two golden rules & the whole house of cards collapses.

Men often fall in love at first sight

No, Mr Redmayne, not my tears. Although I've read that letter every day for the past eight months, those tears were not shed by me, but by the man who wrote them. He knew how much I loved him. We would have made a life together even if we could only spend one day a month with each other. I'd have been happy to wait twenty years, more, in the hope that I would eventually be allowed to spend the rest of my life with the only man I'll ever love. I adored Danny from the day I met him, and no one will ever take his place.

One of the advantages of real worth is that menial tasks can always be left to someone else.