Robert Harris

You know, you can be really quite subversive in popular fiction, which is capable of taking on big issues of politics, war, the rise and fall of commercial dynasties.

Politics is never a victory, it's just the remorseless grinding forward of events.

I see myself as the literary equivalent of a skilled lathe-operator, or a basket-weaver; a potter, maybe: I make mildly diverting objects that people want to buy.

I think it's very, very hard not to go slightly crazy if you're in the top in politics - especially if you're there for a long time.

It implies a slight failure as a writer that you are reduced to being a ghostwriter for the money.

Unlike the Holocaust, Stalin's murders are forgotten: dust blowing in the wind.

My literary career was a fluke. Utterly unexpected.

You find out what you think by talking to yourself.

Writers and journalists tend to be simplistic about politics when, like all other areas of life, it's more complicated.

It's easy enough to get into power. You can make promises and try to be all things to all people. But the moment you have to make decisions, you're going to annoy at least half of them. Whatever you do, in the end you're almost certain to be brought down by your own character traits.

If you go back, 'The Great Gatsby' would be a portrait of the rich and fortune made by business.

We live in an age of great jitteriness in the financial markets. And there's no doubt at all, I think, that the volume of computer-traded stocks has helped contribute to that.

I am sure future historians will say the biggest and most astonishing change in politics has been the embracing of all the tenets of Thatcherism by the party of Keir Hardie: trade union legislation, Europe, the replacement of Trident, 10 per cent tax for people who have made millions from their companies.

Don't try to write too much in a single session. One thousand words a day is quite enough. Stop after about four or five hours.

Writing a novel - unlike operating a piece of heavy machinery, say, or cooking a chicken - is not a skill that can be taught. There is no standard way of doing it, just as there is no means of telling, while you're doing it, whether you're doing it well or badly. And merely because you've done it well once doesn't mean you can do it well again.

We say, 'The market plummets,' like it's some roaring creature.

Storytelling has a narcotic power.

Cicero most reminds me of Harold Wilson. Both men knew how to keep the show on the road.

Humans have changed little over time. We think we've invented the modern world but they were making better speeches 2,000 years ago and grappling with issues of empire and terrorism.

I like to take people you wouldn't really think people would write novels about: an aqueduct engineer, a code-breaker, a hedge-fund manager. It's in those sorts of lives that I find more fascination than in a CIA operative or a Marine or something like that.