Archangel Quotes

“But clever people all make one mistake. They all think everyone else is stupid. And everyone isn't stupid. They just take a bit more time, that's all.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“You can't make sense of the present unless a part of you lives in the past.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“Nothing is more important to a nation than its history. It is the earth upon which any society stands.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“Quod volimus credimus libenter
we always believe what we want to believe”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“Death solves all problems - no man, no problem. - J. V. Stalin, 1918”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“If you are afraid of wolves, keep out of the woods. - J. V. Stalin, 1936”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“Acceptance. That, he had learned in Russia many years ago, was the secret of survival. ... Accept it. Wait. Let the system exhaust itself. Protest will only raise your blood pressure.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“Gratitude", he said, quoting Stalin, "is a dog's disease.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“We are born in a clear field and die in a dark forest.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“His scars and his tattoos were the medals of his lifetime. He was proud to wear them.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“A dog looks up to you, a cat looks down on you, but a pig looks you straight in the eye.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“more enemies, more honour.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“A voice came out of the darkness.
'Don't make it so wide. It's not a grave. You're making work for yourself.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“Have you ever seen fishermen when a storm is brewing on a great river? I have seen them many a time. In the face of a storm one group of fishermen will muster all their forces, encourage their fellows and boldly put out to meet the storm: 'Cheer up, lads, hold tight to the tiller, cut the waves, we'll pull her through!' But there is another type of fishermen - those who, on sensing a storm, lose heart, begin to snivel and demoralise their own ranks: 'What a misfortune, a storm is brewing; lie down, boys, in the bottom of the boat, shut your eyes; let's hope she'll make the shore somehow.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“... unfortunately, freedom alone is not enough, by far. If there is a shortage of bread, a shortage of butter and fats, a shortage of textiles, and if housing conditions are bad, freedom will not carry you very far. It is very difficult, comrades, to live on freedom alone.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“He wondered what O'Brian would have been like in a real war, one in which he actually had to fight rather than just take pictures. Then he wondered what he would have been like. Most of the men he knew asked themselves that question, as if never having fought somehow made them incomplete - left a hole in their lives where a war should have been.
Was it possible that this absence of war - marvellous though it was and so forth: that went without saying - was it possible that it had actually trivialised people? Because everything was so bloody trivial now, wasn't it? This was The Trivial Age. Politics was trivial. What people worried about was trivial - mortgages and pensions and the dangers of passive smoking. Jesus! - is this what we've been reduced to, worrying about passive smoking, when our parents and our grandparents had to worry about being shot or bombed?
And then he began to feel guilty, because what was he implying here? That he wanted a war? ... He was glad it was over, of course, in a way - but at least while it was on people like him had known where they stood, could point to something and say: well, we may not know what we do believe in, but we don't believe in that.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“It was an unnatural time to be awake, ... It meant nothing good. He associated it with emergency, bereavement, conspiracy, flight; the sad skulk away at the end of a one-night affair.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“She didn't say goodbye. She set off up the street, dodging the pedestrians, walking fast. He watched her, waiting to see if she might look back. But of course she didn't. He knew she wouldn't. She wasn't the looking-back kind.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“Time. Now here is a peculiar commodity, boy. The measurement of time. Best accomplished, obviously, with a watch. But, lacking a watch, a man may use instead the ebb and flow of light and dark. Lacking, however, a window through which to see such movement, the reliance must be devolved upon some inner mechanism of the mind. But if the mind has received a shock, the mechanism is disturbed, and time becomes as the ground is to a drunkard, variable.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“He felt more human with his boots on. A man can face the world with something on his feet.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“Does a name stick because it suits a man or does the man, unconsciously, evolve into his name?”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“The foundations of Empire are often occasions of woe; their dismemberment, always.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“Death solves all problems – no man, no problem.’ J. V. Stalin, 1918”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“But clever people all make one mistake. They all think everyone else is stupid. And everyone isn’t stupid. They just take a bit more time, that’s all.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“You always knew if a film was out of synch, however fractionally; you always knew if someone fancied you, however improbably; and you always knew when someone was on your tail.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“And shall I tell you something else, papa, now that we’re talking at last? It was fine. I was fine. Because what was I doing, really, that ten million other girls don’t do every night, only they don’t have the sense to get paid for it? That was decadent. This was business – kapitalism – and it was fine, and it was like you said, I only had one friend: myself.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“Did you know that one of the things Aleksey had to do was interrogate Beria? Night after night. Can you imagine what that must have been like? But Beria never cracked, not once in nearly half a year, until right at the very end, after his trial, when they were strapping him to the board to shoot him. He hadn’t believed they’d dare to kill him.’ ‘How do you mean, he cracked?’ ‘He was squealing like a pig – that’s what Yepishev said. Shouting something about Stalin and something about an archangel. Can you imagine that? Beria, of all people, getting religious! But then they put a scarf in his mouth and shot him. I”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“It is my unshakeable belief that when the proper perspective is restored, statues will be raised again to Stalin.’ ‘Goering said the same of Hitler during the Nuremberg trial. I don’t see any statues –’ ‘Hitler lost.’ ‘But surely Stalin lost? In the end? From the “objective perspective”?’ ‘Stalin inherited a nation with wooden ploughs and bequeathed us an empire armed with atomic weapons. How can you say he lost? The men who came after him – they lost. Not Stalin. Stalin foresaw what would happen, of course. Khrushchev, Molotov, Beria, Malenkov – they thought they were hard, but he saw through them. “After I’ve gone, the capitalists will drown you like blind kittens.” His analysis was correct, as always.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“You know, boy, people criticise Stalin, but you’ve got to say this for him: he lived like a worker. Not like Beria – he thought he was a prince. But Comrade Stalin’s room was a plain man’s room. You’ve got to say that for Stalin. He was always one of us.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel

“The kulaks were contagious. Their souls were contagious. They carried the spores of counter-revolution.”
― Robert Harris, Archangel