Best 21 quotes of Martin Cruz Smith on MyQuotes

As a novelist, I tell stories and people give me money. Then financial planners tell me stories and I give them money.

Because normal human activity is worse for nature than the greatest nuclear accident in history.

Happiness is the maximum agreement of reality and desire.

High Concept means a book or a film whose core idea can be stated in a single sentence, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito are twins. Or, Arnold is pregnant.

If you take the contempt some Americans have for yuppies and multiply it by 10 you might come close to understanding their attitude towards the City, as they call it - London, the people of the south.

I have another Russian idea, too, with a place and a period, so I guess I have enough to keep me busy for quite some time, especially considering that I'm such a slow writer.

I'm very aware when I'm speaking to the English of how flat my Mid-Atlantic American voice is.

It was like passing the scene of a highway accident and being relieved to learn that nobody had been seriously injured.

I used to be treated like an idiot, now I'm treated like an idiot savant.

Kali is the goddess of destruction, the Clawed Hands, the Blood Drinker... And that's one side of her, as it is for any god. If you knew her for thousands of years you'd know she could be all colors. The sky is black at night, but if your eyes were good enough, they could see the different lights of a million stars. Death is part of her because death is part of life.

Mystery books. I must read a hundred a year. . . I just wish some of them were harder to figure out.

Of course the biggest mafia in Russia has always been the government; in Soviet times, the Communist Party, and now a circle of former KGB and FSB.

The most beautiful women in the world were African.

Then there was the whole concept of coal mining, which is a culture unto itself, the most dangerous occupation in the world, and which draws and develops a certain kind of man.

The research is the most interesting part… That’s how I work. I go some place and I walk it and I talk to people until I find what I’ve come for. Or not. Fortunately, I tend to find what I’m after.

To capture the human cost of fallen empire with all its horror and absurdity, Sheets offers the right combination: the political insight of a top reporter and the power of a novelist.

You have to be an outsider to write.

I hate the Army,” Eberly said. “The Army wants you to hate it,” Joe said. “It’s the Army system. It’s what bonds us all together into a fighting unit.

... I used to have a big dog, a rottweiler, to guard the place. One night I was working late, and he was outside barking in the snow. He wouldn't stop. Then he stopped. I went out ten minutes later with a lamp, and there was a ring of wolves eating my dog.

Wolves eat dogs." That did seem to be the consensus of the village, Arkady thought. Roman shook his head as if he'd given the matter a lot of consideration. "Wolves hate dogs. Wolves hunt down dogs because they regard them as traitors. If you think about it, dogs are dogs only because of humans; otherwise they'd all be wolves, right? And where will we be when all the dogs are gone? It will be the end of civilization.

You never gave me an answer,’ Anna said. “Which do you think I am, insane or a tramp?’ ‘Do you want to see me again?’ Joe asked. ‘Yes.’ ‘Then you must be insane.