The Cellist Quotes

“QAnon isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a toxic, extremist ideology that borrows heavily from anti-Semitic tropes such as the blood libel and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And thanks to the pandemic, it has arrived in Western Europe.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“It was the German powerhouse Deutsche Bank AG, not my fictitious RhineBank, that financed the construction of the extermination camp at Auschwitz and the nearby factory that manufactured Zyklon B pellets. And it was Deutsche Bank that earned millions of Nazi reichsmarks through the Aryanization of Jewish-owned businesses. Deutsche Bank also incurred massive multibillion-dollar fines for helping rogue nations such as Iran and Syria evade US economic sanctions; for manipulating the London interbank lending rate; for selling toxic mortgage-backed securities to unwitting investors; and for laundering untold billions’ worth of tainted Russian assets through its so-called Russian Laundromat. In 2007 and 2008, Deutsche Bank extended an unsecured $1 billion line of credit to VTB Bank, a Kremlin-controlled lender that financed the Russian intelligence services and granted cover jobs to Russian intelligence officers operating abroad. Which meant that Germany’s biggest lender, knowingly or unknowingly, was a silent partner in Vladimir Putin’s war against the West and liberal democracy. Increasingly, that war is being waged by Putin’s wealthy cronies and by privately owned companies like the Wagner Group and the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg troll factory that allegedly meddled in the 2016 US presidential election. The IRA was one of three”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“Gabriel thought it was the darkest day in American history since 9/11, though somehow worse. The attack had been launched not by a distant enemy but by the occupant of the Oval Office.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“The first attempted coup in the history of the United States of America had failed.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“Intentionally rude and vulgar, he took pleasure in the discomfort of others.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“The Russian president is not a statesman, Isabel. He is the godfather of a nuclear-armed gangster regime. They are not ordinary, run-of-the-mill gangsters. They are Russian gangsters, which means they are among the cruelest, most violent people on earth.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“A nuclear bomb can only be dropped once. But money can be wielded every day with no fallout and no threat of mutually assured destruction.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“the importance of art and culture in an age of conflict and uncertainty.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“She checked the time on her wristwatch—a Jaeger-LeCoultre Rendez-Vous, diamond accent, a gift from Martin—and saw that it was noon precisely.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“removal of the old varnish and surface grime using cotton wool swabs soaked with a carefully calibrated mixture of acetone, methyl proxitol, and mineral spirits.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“Martin pointed out the Mont Blanc massif, where the Planpincieux glacier was in danger of imminent collapse after several days of above-normal temperatures.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“Morrisons in Plymouth Road,”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“Artemisia Gentileschi.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“A politically divided and destabilized America - an America drifting toward white nationalism, authoritarianism, and isolationism - will pose no challenge (...). Page 467.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“Russian Laundromat?”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“Akimov had decided to throw caution to the wind and host a blowout”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“if dubious figure, a look he described as dignified depravity. He was peering into his Sancerre and pretending to listen to something that Jeremy Crabbe, the director of the Old Master department at Bonhams, was murmuring excitedly into his ear.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“Two minutes after she entered the building, a light appeared in a third-floor window. A rapid check of a government property database indicated that the unit in question was owned by an Isabel Brenner, a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany. A further check revealed that she served as a compliance officer in the Zurich office of RhineBank AG, otherwise known as the world’s dirtiest bank”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“who famously dismissed the clientele of the Hôtel Grand Courchevel as “the elderly and their parents.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“Visitors to Mason’s Yard in St. James’s will search in vain for Isherwood Fine Arts. They will, however, find the extraordinary Old Master gallery owned by my dear friend Patrick Matthiesen. A brilliant art historian blessed with an infallible eye, Patrick never would have allowed a misattributed work by Artemisia Gentileschi to languish in his storerooms for nearly a half century. The painting depicted in The Cellist does not exist. If it did, it would look a great deal like the one produced by Artemisia’s father, Orazio, that hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Like Julian Isherwood and his new managing partner, Sarah Bancroft, the inhabitants of my version of London’s art world are wholly fictitious, as are their sometimes-questionable antics. Their midsummer drinking session at Wiltons Restaurant would have been entirely permissible, as the landmark London eatery briefly reopened its doors before a rise in coronavirus infection rates compelled Prime Minister Boris Johnson to shut down all non-essential businesses. Wherever possible, I tried to adhere to prevailing conditions and government-mandated restrictions. But when necessary, I granted myself the license to tell my story without the crushing weight of the pandemic. I chose Switzerland as the primary setting for The Cellist because life there proceeded largely as normal until November 2020. That said, a private concert and reception at the Kunsthaus Zürich, even for a cause as worthy as democracy, likely could not have taken place in mid-October. I offer my profound apologies to the renowned Janine Jansen for the unflattering comparison to Anna Rolfe. Ms. Jansen is rightly regarded as one of her generation’s finest violinists, and Anna, of course, exists only in my imagination. She was introduced in the second Gabriel Allon novel, The English Assassin, along with Christopher Keller. Martin Landesmann, my committed if deeply flawed Swiss financier, made his debut in The Rembrandt Affair. The story of Gabriel’s blood-soaked duel with the Russian arms dealer Ivan Kharkov is told in Moscow Rules and its sequel, The Defector. Devotees of F. Scott Fitzgerald undoubtedly spotted the luminous line from The Great Gatsby that appears in chapter 32 of The Cellist. For the record, I am well aware that the headquarters of Israel’s secret intelligence service is no longer located on King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv. There is no safe house in the historic moshav of Nahalal—at least not one that I am aware of—and Gabriel and his family do not live on Narkiss Street in West Jerusalem. Occasionally, however, they can be spotted at Focaccia on Rabbi Akiva Street, one of my favorite restaurants in Jerusalem.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“They even owned an automobile, a cherry-red Lada that on occasion actually performed the function for which it was designed and assembled.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“Morosov then reminded Gabriel of his impeccable lineage. He was, to borrow the term coined by the Russian philosopher and writer Zinoviev, a true Homo Sovieticus—a Soviet Man.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“QAnon isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a toxic, extremist ideology that borrows heavily from anti-Semitic tropes such as the blood libel and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“pseudonymous.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“Yes, one could prepare, one could strive, one could make choices, but ultimately life was an elaborate game of providence and probability.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“Nearly one hundred thousand luxury British properties were held by secret owners,”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“It was the German powerhouse Deutsche Bank AG, not my fictitious RhineBank, that financed the construction of the extermination camp at Auschwitz and the nearby factory that manufactured Zyklon B pellets. And it was Deutsche Bank that earned millions of Nazi reichsmarks through the Aryanization of Jewish-owned businesses. Deutsche Bank also incurred massive multibillion-dollar fines for helping rogue nations such as Iran and Syria evade US economic sanctions; for manipulating the London interbank lending rate; for selling toxic mortgage-backed securities to unwitting investors; and for laundering untold billions’ worth of tainted Russian assets through its so-called Russian Laundromat. In 2007 and 2008, Deutsche Bank extended an unsecured $1 billion line of credit to VTB Bank, a Kremlin-controlled lender that financed the Russian intelligence services and granted cover jobs to Russian intelligence officers operating abroad. Which meant that Germany’s biggest lender, knowingly or unknowingly, was a silent partner in Vladimir Putin’s war against the West and liberal democracy. Increasingly, that war is being waged by Putin’s wealthy cronies and by privately owned companies like the Wagner Group and the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg troll factory that allegedly meddled in the 2016 US presidential election. The IRA was one of three Russian companies named in a sprawling indictment handed down by the Justice Department in February 2018 that detailed the scope and sophistication of the Russian interference. According to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, the Russian cyber operatives stole the identities of American citizens, posed as political and religious activists on social media, and used divisive issues such as race and immigration to inflame an already divided electorate—all in support of their preferred candidate, the reality television star and real estate developer Donald Trump. Russian operatives even traveled to the United States to gather intelligence. They focused their efforts on key battleground states and, remarkably, covertly coordinated with members of the Trump campaign in August 2016 to organize rallies in Florida. The Russian interference also included a hack of the Democratic National Committee that resulted in a politically devastating leak of thousands of emails that threw the Democratic convention in Philadelphia into turmoil. In his final report, released in redacted form in April 2019, Robert Mueller said that Moscow’s efforts were part of a “sweeping and systematic” campaign to assist Donald Trump and weaken his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Mueller was unable to establish a chargeable criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, though the report noted that key witnesses used encrypted communications, engaged in obstructive behavior, gave false or misleading testimony, or chose not to testify at all. Perhaps most damning was the special counsel’s conclusion that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from the information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“That evening, a once-unfathomable sentence, composed by columnist Thomas L. Friedman, appeared in the New York Times: “There is overwhelming evidence that our president, for the first time in our history, is deliberately or through gross negligence or because of his own twisted personality engaged in treasonous behavior.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“Unlike the previous Democratic president, he had not emerged from obscurity to dazzle a nation with his oratory and good looks. Indeed, Gabriel could scarcely recall a time when he was not a part of American political life. Twice before he had sought the presidency, and twice he had failed. Now, in the twilight of his life, he had been called upon to heal a sick and divided nation—a difficult task for a leader in his prime, harder still for one who had been slowed by age. Regrettably, he and Gabriel had that affliction in common.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist

“Gabriel hurried upstairs and collected a prepacked suitcase with three days’ worth of clothing and kit. Thirty minutes later he carried the bag up the airstair of his Gulfstream jet. It departed Ben Gurion Airport at 7:05 a.m., bound for the flashing red warning light once known as the world’s beacon of democracy.”
― Daniel Silva, The Cellist