British - Novelist | March 7, 1957 -
I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.
Robert Harris
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One cannot see any world leader who has got a grip on the financial markets these days. They're too big, too fast. I think that's quite scary.
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Orwell has always been a huge influence on me.
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My parents were interested in history and the world. My father read Graham Greene and Georges Simenon and was a strong trade unionist and Labour supporter.
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I can't get very excited about the House of Commons these days because I don't feel the power is there. What is really bizarre is that you sense it is not in Washington either. It is now very hard even to locate the levers of power, let alone to pull them and change things.
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To tell a good story and to illuminate the world: the two things are completely linked. That is the point. That is what I've always wanted to do.
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There's nothing more interesting than the details of someone's life.
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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.
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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.
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Cicero most reminds me of Harold Wilson. Both men knew how to keep the show on the road.
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Leaders today are isolated by phalanxes of body guards. It's profoundly undemocratic, the way they have used terrorism as a means to protect themselves.
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We say, 'The market plummets,' like it's some roaring creature.
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