Robert Harris

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

Cut your manuscript ruthlessly but never throw anything away: it's amazing how often a discarded scene or description, which wouldn't fit in one place, will work perfectly later.

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

I owe a great deal to Harold Hobson, doyen drama critic of the 'U.K. Sunday Times,' who championed me as Shakespeare's Richard II at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival.

I studied Latin in high school, and I was reading stuff from Cicero. And that signal took a few thousand years to get to me. But I was still interested in what he had to say.

They said I couldn't play anything but an English boy. I knew I could. So I went to New York.