It’s great that in the German language I’ve sold almost 30 million books. Isn’t that amazing?
I want to tell a story that makes the reader always want to see what will happen next.
I might not be a good socialist, any more than I’m a good Christian, but I am one.
I like reading history, and actually most authors enjoy the research part because it is, after all, easier than writing.
Fear could paralyse. Action was the antidote.
Everybody takes what they life from the teachings of the church, and ignores the parts that don’t suit them.
The greater their ignorance, the stronger their opinions.
We’re all good when it suits us, he used to say: that doesn’t count. It’s when you want so badly to do something wrong – when you’re about to make a fortune from a dishonest deal, or kiss the lovely lips of your neighbor’s wife, or tell a lie to get yourself out of terrible trouble – that’s when you need the rules. Your integrity is like a sword, he would say: you shouldn’t wave it until you’re about to put it to the test.
It was an odd relationship, but then she was an extraordinary woman: a prioress who doubted much of what the church taught; an acclaimed healer who rejected medicine as practised by physicians; and a nun who made enthusiastic love to her man whenever she could get away with it. If I wanted a normal relationship, Merthin told himself, I should have picked a normal girl.
She looked at his young face, so full of concern and tenderness; and she remembered why she had run away from everyone else and sought solitude here. She yearned to kiss him, and she saw the answering longing in his eyes. Every fiber of her body told her to throw herself into his arms, but she knew what she had to do. She wanted to say, I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage; but instead she said: “I think I’m going to marry Alfred.
There’s a saying: ‘If you owe a hundred dollars, the bank has you in its power; but if you owe a million dollars, you have the bank in your power.
A man hates the person he has wronged, paradoxically. I think it’s because the victim is a perpetual reminder that he behaved shamefully.
When a man is certain that he knows God’s will, and is resolved to do it regardless of the cost, he is the most dangerous person in the world.
He had seen – clever, clever boy that he was – that she could not be won by wooing; and he had approached her sidelong, as a friend rather than a lover, meeting her in the woods and telling her stories and making her love him without her noticing.
The first casualty of a civil war was justice, Philip had realized.
A white American can orbit the earth, but a black American can’t enter a restroom.
Trials rarely found men not guilty. The general view was that if a man were innocent he would not have got into trouble in the first place.
She was wilful, maddening, quarrelsome and intolerant, but somehow these things were trifling: there was a passion inside her that burned like a candle in a lantern, and it lit up his life.
After the Battle of Midway it was clear that the Pacific war would be won by planes launched from ships. Both Japan and the United States began crash programs to build aircraft carriers as fast as possible. During 1943 and 1944, Japan produced seven of these huge, costly vessels. In the same period, the United States produced ninety.
All birds and men are sure to die but songs may live forever.