Top 300 Ken Follett Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Hard work should be rewarded by good food.”

— Ken Follett

2. “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.”

— Ken Follett

3. “Fear could paralyse. Action was the antidote.”

— Ken Follett

4. “No storm can shake my inmost calm While to that rock I’m clinging Since Love is Lord of heaven and earth How can I keep from singing?”

— Ken Follett

5. “The most expensive part of building is the mistakes.”

— Ken Follett

6. “Culture clash is terrific drama.”

— Ken Follett

7. “A man should have a hobby. It keeps him out of trouble. -Madeleine Pilaster.”

— Ken Follett

8. “But desperate people find courage.”

— Ken Follett

9. “I learned the meaning of the word bittersweet, the acid taste of loss and the honey of hope in one bright fruit.”

— Ken Follett

10. “A secret shared is a secret no more.”

— Ken Follett

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

— Ken Follett

12. “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.”

— Ken Follett

Featured in: Fun Quotes

13. “Sabe que no es posible hacerlo todo, que hay que elegir las batallas que pueden ganarse.”

— Ken Follett

14. “Nothing is permanent, except change.”

— Ken Follett

15. “Man who betrayed you once would betray you twice.”

— Ken Follett

16. “Proportion is the heart of beauty.”

— Ken Follett

17. “A mistake is a mistake. Another mistake is normal. Only the same mistake twice makes you a fool.”

— Ken Follett

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

— Ken Follett

19. “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.”

— Ken Follett

20. “Never use your own money when you can spend someone else’s.”

— Ken Follett

21. “Hunger is the best seasoning.”

— Ken Follett

22. “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

23. “The greater their ignorance, the stronger their opinions.”

— Ken Follett

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

— Ken Follett

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

25. “The thriller is the most popular literary genre of the 20th century.”

— Ken Follett

26. “Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.”

— Ken Follett

27. “I enjoy learning technical details.”

— Ken Follett

28. “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

29. “She was unique: there was something abnormal about her, and it was that abnormal something that made her magnetic.”

— Ken Follett

30. “You see, all that I ever held dear has been taken from me,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “And when you’ve lost everything-” Her facade began to crumble, and her voice broke, but she made herself carry on. “When you’ve lost everything, you’ve got nothing to lose.”

— Ken Follett

31. “I want to tell a story that makes the reader always want to see what will happen next.”

— Ken Follett

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

32. “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

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. “We never forgive those we’ve wronged.”

— Ken Follett

35. “He had quoted Lenin: ‘He who controls Berlin, controls Germany; and who controls Germany, controls Europe.”

— Ken Follett

36. “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

37. “All men make mistakes,’ said the ancient Greek Sophocles. ‘But a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only sin is pride.”

— Ken Follett

38. “In the Arab world, every work of art has a tiny flaw, so that it doesn’t sacrilegiously compete with the perfection of God.”

— Ken Follett

39. “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

40. “The ability to listen to smart people who disagree with you is a rare talent – but.”

— Ken Follett

41. “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.”

— Ken Follett

42. “I could fall for you in a heartbeat.”

— Ken Follett

43. “Never call a meeting until the outcome is a foregone conclusion.”

— Ken Follett

44. “When a man is certain that he knows God’s will, and is resolved to do it regardless of the cost, he is the most dangerous person in the world.”

— Ken Follett

45. “The Ottoman Empire was in decline, held back from modernization by a conservative Muslim priesthood.”

— Ken Follett

46. “To someone standing in the nave, looking down the length of the church toward the east, the round window would seem like a huge sun exploding into innumerable shards of gorgeous color.”

— Ken Follett

47. “I aim to be translucent, so you don’t notice the words, just their meaning. I haven’t much insight into people’s motivations.”

— Ken Follett

48. “When you’re thinking, please remember this: excessive pride is a familiar sin, but a man may just as easily frustrate the will of God through excessive humility.”

— Ken Follett

49. “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.”

— Ken Follett

50. “Changing your beliefs with every change of monarch was called “policy,” and people who did it were “politicians.”

— Ken Follett