Edge of Eternity (The Century Trilogy Book 3)

by Ken Follett

A white American can orbit the earth, but a black American can’t enter a restroom.

liberalization proceeded by two steps forward and one back.

It’s a dissident voice, an alternative view of the world, a different way of thinking. A typewriter is freedom of speech.’

And that was the problem, George reflected bitterly. People hated disorder.

‘International politics is like a glass. Aggressive moves by either side pour water in. The overflow is war.’

‘So, what are we going to do about the crisis in Berlin?’ he said. ‘We’re going to build a wall,’ said Khrushchev.

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

It occurred to Rebecca that Hans and all secret policemen were obliged to believe – or at least, to pretend to believe – in fantastic conspiracies against the government. Otherwise their work was a waste of time.

A man hates the person he has wronged, paradoxically. I think it’s because the victim is a perpetual reminder that he behaved shamefully.’

‘Moral rules must be obeyed when it doesn’t suit us. Otherwise, why would we need rules?’

‘My father had the same bound-for-glory light in his eyes.’

Death was the penalty for trying to leave the Communist paradise.

Communism was supposed to be a joyous crusade to make a better world. Sometimes the Soviet Union was more like a medieval monastery where everyone had taken vows of poverty and obedience.

People who worked with Bobby saw into his heart, frequently. It made him more vulnerable but also more lovable.

In politics, everything was connected.

Dimka was beginning to suspect that aggression was self-defeating in international politics.

Nowadays he avoided political discussions with outsiders. They usually had easy answers: send all the Mexicans home, put Hell’s Angels in the army, castrate the queers. The greater their ignorance, the stronger their opinions.

“Trust in Allah, but tether your camel.”

‘I’ve heard that restaurants in the United States open when people want food and drinks, not when the staff want to work,’ said Natalya. ‘Do you think it’s true?’ ‘Probably just propaganda,’ said Dimka.

Why be consistent? It only made life easier for the enemy.

That’s what happens when governments don’t listen to scientists.’

‘War is not a picnic,’ Mawhinney said angrily. ‘If we avoid war, we can carry on having picnics.’

‘Everyone knows who were the hawks and who were the doves,’ he said. Bundy himself was a hawk. ‘Today was the day of the doves.’

For years now I have heard the word: “Wait”. It rings in my ears with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” always means “Never”. We have waited three hundred and forty years for our rights. African nations are moving with jet-like speed towards independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.’

‘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.”

‘We will have to repent, in this generation, not merely for the hateful words and actions of bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good,’

Just as the Eskimos were said to have numerous different words for snow, so the citizens of Moscow had many phrases for the black market.

Race has no place in American life or law. He was excited beyond measure. America was changing, right now, minute by minute, and he was part of that change.

‘I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

That my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character – I have a dream today.

Jasper felt as if he had come through a storm, or a battle, or a love affair:

‘Today I stood in a crowd of two hundred thousand people and heard Martin Luther King redefine what it means to be American.’

As long as respectable people said it was all right to treat Negroes as if they were not quite human, ignorant thugs would think they had permission to kill children.

Walli wondered what right he had to an opinion.

‘You think it’s all right for you to come out with your crude prejudices, just because you’re the burned-out head of a school for rich kids!’ ‘Be silent!’ ‘Never,’ said Dave, and he left the room.

Dimka wondered what it must be like, to love a woman for half a century and then lose her, suddenly, between one beat of the heart and the next.

‘Call no man happy until he is dead,’

Youthful promise could be blighted by later tragedy; suffering was often rewarded by wisdom.

‘Just because someone asks you a question, don’t think you have to answer. I’ve learned that in politics.

And she had realized that wherever there was cruel oppression – in the Deep South of the US, in British Northern Ireland, and in East Germany – there had to be many nice, ordinary people like her family who looked away from the grisly truth.

‘We were just two boys. I escaped because I had to. He shot me because he had to. It’s the Wall that is evil.’

Hell has never looked so pretty, Jasper was thinking when the bomb went off.

Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom.

‘Dr King was killed, but America is still bleeding.’

He spoke with difficulty. ‘Good times never come back,’ he said.

In the Soviet Union almost every document was deceitful: production figures, foreign policy assessments, police interviews with suspects, economic forecasts. Behind their hands people murmured that the only true page in the newspaper was the one with the radio and television programmes.

He was jumping off a diving board in the dark, and could not see the water below.

people who clung to the simple belief that you were either for America or against it.

‘The heart is a map of the world, did you know that?’

I realize that your mother devoted herself from the age of sixteen exclusively to caring for you, but you were born in 1936, for Christ’s sake. We’re in the seventies now. Feminism has arrived. Work is no longer something a woman does merely to pass the time until some man condescends to make her his domestic slave.’