Top 46 Quotes by Ken Follett

For success, the author must make the reader care about the destiny of the principals, and sustain this anxiety, or suspense, for about 100,000 words.

I'm a great planner, so before I ever write chapter 1, I work out what happens in every chapter and who the characters are. I usually spend a year on the outline.

I enjoy learning technical details.

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.

I read mostly fiction, a lot of 19th-century novels.

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.

Movies have influenced all writers, not just thriller writers.

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.

My favorite period is World War II, and I'm in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era.

Most of my stories have some basis in fact.