John > John's Quotes

“There were two types of strong men: those like Uncle Monty and Abe Steinheim, remorseless about their making money, and those like my father, ruthlessly obedient to their idea of fair play.”
― Philip Roth, The Plot Against America

“I was still too much of a fledgling with people to understand that, in the long run, nobody is a picnic and that I was no picnic myself.”
― Philip Roth, The Plot Against America

“If anybody asks, 'Can you do this job? Can you handle it?' you tell 'em 'Absolutely.' By the time they find out that you can't, you'll have already learned, and the job'll be yours. And who knows, it might just turn out to be the opportunity of a lifetime.”
― Philip Roth, The Plot Against America

“Remorse, predictably, was the form taken by her distress, the merciless whipping that is self-condemnation, as if in times as bizarre as these there were a right way and a wrong way that would have been clear to somebody else, as if in confronting such predicaments the hand of stupidity is ever far from guiding anyone.”
― Philip Roth, The Plot Against America

“The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.”
― Philip Roth, The Plot Against America

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Nothing more frightening, to someone who’d lived by his wits, than to be slowly losing them.”
― Mick Herron, Spook Street

“when it comes to suicide bombers, everyone’s a first-timer.”
― Mick Herron, Spook Street

“Those who write the rules rarely suffer their weight.”
― Mick Herron, Spook Street