Top 300 Ken Follett Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “For me the words should be like a pane of glass that you look through, not at.”

— Ken Follett

252. “There was something terribly thrilling in watching the elements spit and sway and roar in fury, in standing fractionally too close to the cliff edge, feeling threatened and safe at the same time, shivering with cold and perspiring in fear. It was thrilling, and there were few thrills in her life.”

— Ken Follett

253. “This guy was high on Greg’s suspect list. He was German, though he had left in the mid-1930s and gone to London. He was an anti-Nazi but not a Communist: his politics were Social Democrat. He was married to an American girl, an artist. Talking to him over lunch, Greg found no reason for suspicion: he seemed to love living in America and to be interested in little but his work. But with foreigners you could never be quite sure where their ultimate loyalty lay.”

— Ken Follett

254. “We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary.”

— Ken Follett

255. “Protestors can have a big impact, but in the end it’s governments that reshape the world.”

— Ken Follett

256. “Its job was to arrange the painless deaths of handicapped people who could not survive without costly care. It had done splendid work in the last couple of years, disposing of tens of thousands of useless people. The problem was that German public opinion was not yet sophisticated enough to understand the need for such deaths, so the program had to be kept quiet.”

— Ken Follett

257. “A woman would always prefer to be remembered than forgotten.”

— Ken Follett

258. “They demanded tolerance, and the right to worship as they wished, but they were never satisfied with that, he thought with exasperation. They believed their rivals were not just mistaken but evil. Catholic practices – the ways in which Europeans had worshipped for hundreds of years – were blasphemous, they said, and must be abolished. They did not practice the tolerance they preached.”

— Ken Follett

259. “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.’ He paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.”

— Ken Follett

260. “For years we’ve been campaigning against the rule that women can’t vote. That’s the barrier. Once it’s broken down, people will see further concessions as mere technicalities. It will be relatively easy to get the voting age lowered and other restrictions eased.”

— Ken Follett

261. “When you’re about to be turned down, go for a postponement.”

— Ken Follett

262. “No candidate is perfect’ said Lloyd. ‘It’s how you deal with your weaknesses that matters.”

— Ken Follett

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

— Ken Follett

264. “Walli’s sister came into the room. Lili was almost three years younger, and these days he was not sure how to treat her. For as long as he could remember she had been a pain in the neck, like a younger boy but sillier. However, lately she had become more sensible and, to complicate matters, some of her friends had breasts.”

— Ken Follett

265. “The people of the East End did not want to overthrow the British government. On the contrary, they were deeply attached to their elections and their borough councils and their Houses of Parliament. They liked their system of government so much that they were determined to defend it against Fascism even if it would not defend itself.”

— Ken Follett

266. “The sight of them all made Caris marvel: each individual had a different life, every one of them rich and complex, with dramas in the past and challenges in the future, happy memories and secret sorrows, and a crowd of friends and enemies and loved ones.”

— Ken Follett

267. “Men often told a fairy tale in which there was a division of labor in families, the man going out to earn money, the woman looking after home and children. Reality was different.”

— Ken Follett

268. “People change’. Weak women change to please men, Lili thought.”

— Ken Follett

269. “We’ll see, Grigori thought as he drifted off to sleep. Brave words came easily in the dark. Daylight might tell a different story.”

— Ken Follett

270. “This was not a political party. It was an army.”

— Ken Follett

271. “The original eight cryptanalysts were supplemented, after Pearl Harbor, by some of the musicians from the band of the sunken battleship California. For reasons no one understood, musicians were good at decoding.”

— Ken Follett

272. “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

273. “Don’t be a hero. Leave that to them that started the war – the upper classes, the Conservatives, the officers.”

— Ken Follett

274. “Winston was an odd mix, Fitz thought: aristocrat and man of the people, a brilliant administrator who could never resist meddling in other people’s departments, a charmer who was disliked by most of his political colleagues.”

— Ken Follett

275. “How exciting to be at the center of power.” “It is exciting, but strangely enough it doesn’t feel like the center of power. In a democracy the president is subject to the voters.” “But surely he doesn’t just do what the public wants.” “Not exactly, no. 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

276. “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.”

— Ken Follett

277. “Ethel had not gone to chapel – there was too much to do in the house. “What did you pray about?” “I asked the Lord to help us understand why He allowed the explosion down the pit.” Billy cast a nervous glance at Da, who was not smiling. Da said severely: “Billy might have done better to ask God to strengthen his faith, so that he can believe without understanding.”

— Ken Follett

278. “I don’t stoop to criticize you. I despise you. – Samuel Pilaster.”

— Ken Follett

279. “It’s hard to be a woman, she thought. You love your baby with all your heart and soul, and then one day he just leaves.”

— Ken Follett

280. “I’ve met the people who run Alabama. Believe me, they’re not that smart.”

— Ken Follett

281. “You will make love to a fat Prussian general who will call you his Liebling.”

— Ken Follett

282. “They had paid her the compliment of coming to her door without an invitation, knowing they would be welcomed. They belonged to her, and she to them. They were, she realized, her family.”

— Ken Follett

283. “She was twenty-six years old, her life was ruined, and it was her own fault.”

— Ken Follett

284. “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

285. “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.”

— Ken Follett

286. “An apology is designed to make the offender feel okay so that he can do it again. Don’t be sorry.” Kincaid tried to gather the shreds.”

— Ken Follett

287. “Nothing is permanent, except change.”

— Ken Follett

288. “Any man who needs to surround himself with loyal acolytes doesn’t really believe in.”

— Ken Follett

289. “Boy did not see why two great nations such as England and Germany should go to war over a half-barbaric wasteland such as Poland.”

— Ken Follett

290. “Weapons seem to be the issue now, isn’t it?” “Aye,” said Billy. “The Germans and the Italians are supplying the rebels with guns and ammunition, as well as fighter planes and pilots. But no one is helping the elected Spanish government.”

— Ken Follett

291. “When Philip relived that day in his nightmares, and woke up sweating and screaming in the dark, he would always be able to calm himself, and eventually relax into sleep again, by bringing to mind that final tableau, and the way the screaming and the wounds had been swept aside by the unarmed man with the cross.”

— Ken Follett

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

— Ken Follett

293. “Fitz did not censor her mail but, as the head of the family, he had the right to read any letter addressed to a female relative living in his house. No respectable woman would object.”

— Ken Follett

294. “I could weep for all the innocent women and children who were burned and maimed in London – and it doesn’t help at all to know that German women and children are suffering the same.”

— Ken Follett

295. “The world has become wicked. Heresy, lasciviousness, and disrespect are rife. Men question authority, women flaunt their bodies, children disobey their parents. God is angry, and His rage is fearsome. Don’t try to run from His justice! It will find you, no matter where you hide.”

— Ken Follett

296. “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.”

— Ken Follett

297. “The war in Continental Europe appeared to be over. Germany had won. Europe was Fascist from Poland to Sicily and from Hungary to Portugal. There was no fighting anywhere. Rumors said the British government had discussed peace terms.”

— Ken Follett

298. “America is free because it has disrespectful newspapers and television shows to expose and shame presidents.”

— Ken Follett

299. “Ma and Pa had taught their sons to keep themselves fresh by bathing at least once a year.”

— Ken Follett

300. “The strange thing is that everyone knows the answer. We need to decentralize decisions, introduce limited markets, and legitimize the semi-illegal gray economy so that it can grow.”

— Ken Follett