Top 100 Ken Follett Quotes
#1. Any history buffs, people who like religion, suspense and mystery mixed with history, or anyone who likes 'The Da Vinci Code,' needs to read Ken Follett.
Bonnie Somerville
#2. Most of my stories have some basis in fact.
Ken Follett
#3. They usually had easy answers: send all the Mexicans home, put Hells Angels in the army, castrate the queers. The greater their ignorance, the stronger their opinions. Georgetown was only a few minutes
Ken Follett
#5. Because all this stuff about military targets is absolute rubbish. There's no point in bombing German factories, because they just rebuild them. So we're targeting large areas of dense working-class housing. They can't replace the workers so fast.
Ken Follett
#6. There he saw a woman. He recognised her. She smiled. His heart stood still. Aliena
Ken Follett
#8. If it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive.
Ken Follett
#9. 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.
Ken Follett
#10. Everything is ultimately the Prime Minister's fault', said Lloyd. 'That's what it means to be the leader
Ken Follett
#11. She was unique: there was something abnormal about her, and it was that abnormal something that made her magnetic.
Ken Follett
#12. Fear could paralyse. Action was the antidote.
Ken Follett
#13. All too familiar, he relived those few traumatic seconds at the wheel of Joe Henry's old black Framo van. He recalled his terror as he saw the border guard kneel down
Ken Follett
#14. Marvelous, isn't it, how these Germans can shoot back at us even when they're fucking dead.
Ken Follett
#15. It was the most romantic plane ever made.
Ken Follett
#16. Did she go to Washington Redskins football games, or follow the Nats baseball team?
Ken Follett
#17. He wondered if he really was capable of it. Then he thought what a thrill it would be to create something from nothing; to see, one day in the future, a new church here where now there was nothing but rubble, and to say: I made this.
Ken Follett
#18. A baby was like a revolution, Grigori thought: you could start one, but you could not control how it would turn out.
Ken Follett
#19. I might not be a good socialist, any more than I'm a good Christian, but I am one.
Ken Follett
#20. The old men were still running the country. The politicians who had caused millions of deaths were now celebrating, as if they had done something wonderful.
Ken Follett
#22. He said it in the half-embarrassed, half-defiant tone of someone admitting that he belongs to a religious sect. "You
Ken Follett
#23. Welsh chapelgoers automatically sang in four-part harmony, and when they were in the mood they could raise the roof. As he joined in, Lloyd felt this was the beating heart of Britain, here in this whitewashed chapel.
Ken Follett
#24. Listen, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I broke through, so I'm looking all the time to keep my books fascinating. I want to write what people want to read, not push any message.
Ken Follett
#25. In Germany the police had supported the Nazis and sided with the Brownshirts. Would they do the same here? Surely
Ken Follett
#26. We move by inches, not miles,' said Gus Dewar with a smile. 'That's politics.
Ken Follett
#27. There's a time and place for spontaneity,
Ken Follett
#28. Thrillers have been traditionally very masculine books; the women characters often rather decorative.
Ken Follett
#29. Kerner Commission, appointed to examine the causes of racial unrest during the long, hot summer of 1967. Their report pulled no punches: the cause of the rioting was white racism,
Ken Follett
#30. He was like a man who has got used to drinking the finest wine, and now finds that everyday wine thats like vinegar.
Ken Follett
#31. Chaperoning rules had relaxed since the outbreak of war. It was no longer scandalous for a single woman to go out unescorted in the daytime.
Ken Follett
#32. He had a taste for wild, spreading, disorderly things: high mountains,aged oaks,and Aliena's hair.
Ken Follett
#33. That my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character - I have a dream today.
Ken Follett
#34. People change'. Weak women change to please men, Lili thought.
Ken Follett
#35. It seemed trivial. After the battlefield it was going to be difficult to take seriously some of the stuff people worried about in peacetime.
Ken Follett
#36. just as the Monroe Doctrine gave the same rights to the USA in South America.
Ken Follett
#37. When I'm brave and strong, and care for children and the sick and the poor, I become a better person. And when I'm cruel, cowardly, or tell lies, or get drunk, I turn into someone less worthy, and I can't respect myself. That's the divine retribution I believe in
Ken Follett
#38. But instead of feeling ashamed she was overwhelmed by a sense of her own power. She had resolved not to let people make her a victim, and she had proved she could keep her resolution.
Ken Follett
#39. I adore you' she said. 'When you go, I'll cry. But I'm not going to spoil today by being miserable about tomorrow
Ken Follett
#40. hundred million Europeans were living on fifteen hundred calories a day - the level at which health begins to suffer from malnutrition. As
Ken Follett
#41. Englishmen did not speak to strangers on trains ...
Ken Follett
#42. She loved his seriousness. Most men, even quite clever ones, became silly when they talked to women. Walter spoke to her just as intelligently as he spoke to Robert or Fitz, and - even more unusually - he listened to her answers.
Ken Follett
#43. Desperate men are dangerous. And I do know that the United States is not ready to go to war against Japan. Our navy isn't ready and our air force isn't ready.
Ken Follett
#44. Americans talked about voters the same way Russians talked about Stalin. They had to be obeyed.
Ken Follett
#45. Movies have influenced all writers, not just thriller writers.
Ken Follett
#46. 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.
Ken Follett
#47. She had believed that love was something she could bestow upon whomever she liked, and that her main responsibility was to choose cleverly.
Ken Follett
#48. And what if Britain lost? There would be a financial crisis, unemployment, and destitution. Working-class men would take up Ethel's father's cry and say that they had never been allowed to vote for the war. The people's rage against their rulers would be boundless.
Ken Follett
#49. Our great stumbling block, in our stride toward freedom, is not the White Citizens' Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner. It's the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who constantly says, like Bobby Kennedy: 'I agree with the goal you seek, but I cannot condone your methods.
Ken Follett
#50. Don't ask!" said Bevin. "If you ask questions, you'll get answers you don't want.
Ken Follett
#51. We're all idealists," said Lord Silverman, smoothing over the conflict like a good host. "That's why we're in politics. People without ideals don't bother. But we have to confront the realities of elections and public opinion.
Ken Follett
#52. You will make love to a fat Prussian general who will call you his Liebling.
Ken Follett
#53. Repress those who complain, rather than address their discontents.
Ken Follett
#54. Half the people in London were not English anyway: they were Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Caribbean, Indian and Chinese. All the drug dealers came from islands: Maltese men sold pep pills,
Ken Follett
#55. The Japanese discussed extending their empire, Bexforth went on. They had already annexed the vast region of Manchuria, Greg
Ken Follett
#56. She had always liked what Scarlett O'Hara said in Gone with the Wind: I'll think about it tomorrow. Not anymore.
Ken Follett
#57. Soldiers want to win wars, not avoid them." The
Ken Follett
#58. One is a comfortable partnership, where two people share the same hopes and fears, raise children as a team, and give each other comfort and help
Ken Follett
#59. It's like knowing your way through the forest. You don't keep the whole forest in your mind, but wherever you are, you know where to go next.
Ken Follett
#60. We have never made a gain, in civil rights, without pressure,
Ken Follett
#61. Even if you were taken out of school for want of money, Hugh. It's no excuse for false values. The world is full of poor people who understand that love and friendship are more important than riches - Maisie Greenbourne
Ken Follett
#62. Texaco's chairman, the Hitler-admiring Torkild Rieber, was using the company's tankers to smuggle oil to the rebels in defiance of a specific request from President Roosevelt.
Ken Follett
#63. What she needs,' Tom said aloud 'is a husband.' Agnes said crisply, 'Well, she can't have mine.
Ken Follett
#64. When you were trying to enforce law and order, it was difficult to explain that the rules did not actually apply to you personally.
Ken Follett
#65. Birmingham was a dirty industrial city, and from the plane it had a delicate rose-pink aura of pollution, like the chiffon scarf around the neck of an old prostitute.
Ken Follett
#66. Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made this century, to the proposition that" - he had gone formal, but now he reverted to plain language - "race has no place in American life or law.
Ken Follett
#67. A woman would always prefer to be remembered than forgotten.
Ken Follett
#68. Don't you know that if you deny the truth about yourself you lose your soul?
Ken Follett
#69. The victim had been John Lewis, the theology student. He had been attacked by thugs in a white restroom in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
Ken Follett
#70. One of the monks was doing something incomprehensible at the altar, and the others would occasionally chant a few phrases of mumbo jumbo.
Ken Follett
#71. Philip looked incredulously at the tiny bundle in Johnny's arms. He reached out a hand tentatively, and lifted a corner of the blanket. He saw a wrinkled pink face, an open toothless mouth and a little bald head - a miniature of an aging monk.
Ken Follett
#72. Fascism offered false solutions, simplistically blaming groups such as Jews and Communists for complex problems such as unemployment and crime.
Ken Follett
#73. Perched on top of the pointed nose of the
Ken Follett
#75. The Ottoman Empire was in decline, held back from modernization by a conservative Muslim priesthood.
Ken Follett
#76. Thought dismally. No doubt a more modest future awaited him.
Ken Follett
#77. His aim was the glory of God, but the glory of Philip pleased him too.
Ken Follett
#78. Sir Edward Grey was a thin man with a face like a skull. He disliked foreigners and almost never traveled abroad: in British eyes, that made him the perfect foreign secretary. "Thank
Ken Follett
#79. 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.
Ken Follett
#80. Barrow, who evidently had never seen an atlas, felt superior to Descartes, Rembrandt, and Beethoven.
Ken Follett
#81. The kiss of peace, which was part of the ritual of the mass, was the symbol of trust, and no contract, from a wedding to a truce, was complete without it.
Ken Follett
#82. I've never told anyone about that letter," he said quietly. "I know," Thomas replied. "If you had, you'd be dead.
Ken Follett
#83. Monks committed all the same sins that ordinary people did. He had just been shocked by the woman's shamelessness. The sight of her nakedness remained with him, the way the hot heart of a candle flame, stared at for a few moments, would burn on behind closed eyelids.
Ken Follett
#84. When people are perfectly polite, it usually means they don't really care. A little awkwardness is more sincere.
Ken Follett
#85. They have no tsar in America - no emperor or king of any kind. The army can't just shoot anyone they like. The people rule the country!" She
Ken Follett
#86. You don't give up on democracy every time you lose a vote, Ethel said crisply.
Ken Follett
#87. He was only a boy from a Welsh hill village who had the good fortune to become a monk. Today he would speak to the king. What gave him the right?
Ken Follett
#88. Women wanted a new deal, and they expected him to know, without being told, what the deal was, and to agree to it without negotiation.
Ken Follett
#89. With the World War II era, there's so much written material to draw on. When you go back to the 14th century, you have to imagine more.
Ken Follett
#90. Him like a mild electric shock. No woman outside his family had touched him for two years.
Ken Follett
#91. They're Americans when they win races, and when they get conscripted into the army,' Dave said. 'But they're Negroes when they want to buy the house next door to yours.
Ken Follett
#92. Then he told himself to be calm: this took place a thousand times a day all over the world. He did not need to understand it. The baby would come without his help.
Ken Follett
#93. Marriage is a promise. You can't keep a promise only when it suits you. You have to keep it against your inclination. That's what it means.
Ken Follett
#94. 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.
Ken Follett
#95. Grigori had become good at that, and in consequence had won the loyalty of his platoon.
Ken Follett
#96. You mean there isn't an indisputable book that is the actual Word of God? Men argue about it and make a judgment?
Ken Follett
#97. You'd be surprised. Look, most Republicans are decent men who simply have a view of the world that is different from ours. But there is a hard core of fucking nutcases.
Ken Follett
#98. 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.'
Ken Follett
#99. How terrible, Jack thought, to be old and know that your life has been wasted.
Ken Follett
#100. 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.
Ken Follett
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