Ken Follett Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

His aim was the glory of God, but the glory of Philip pleased him too.

Ken Follett
Why was it, Lloyd wondered, that the people who wanted to destroy everything good about their country were the quickest to wave the national flag?

Ken Follett
You see, all that I ever held dear has been taken from me," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "And when you've lost everything-" Her facade began to crumble, and her voice broke, but she made herself carry on. "When you've lost everything, you've got nothing to lose.

Ken Follett
There is no point in asking a man a question until you have established whether he has any reason to lie to you.

Ken Follett
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.

Ken Follett
A baby was like a revolution, Grigori thought: you could start one, but you could not control how it would turn out.

Ken Follett
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.

Ken Follett
Why do you have to be the same as the others?...Most of them are stupid.

Ken Follett
You never know," Jack said speculatively. "There may come a time when savages like William Hamleigh aren't in power; when the laws protect the ordinary people instead of enslaving them; when the king makes peace instead of war. Think of that - a time when towns in England don't need walls!

Ken Follett
Best-sellers are about murder, money, revenge, ambition, and sex, sex, sex. So are literary novels. But best-selling authors give you more per page.

Ken Follett
Nevertheless, the book gave Jack a feeling he had never had before, that the past was like a story, in which one thing led to another, and the world was not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that could be comprehended.

Ken Follett
President Wilson says a leader must treat public opinion the way a sailor deals with the wind, using it to blow the ship in one direction or another, but never trying to go directly against it.

Ken Follett
What she needs,' Tom said aloud 'is a husband.' Agnes said crisply, 'Well, she can't have mine.

Ken Follett
In both cases, weakness and scruples had defeated strength and ruthlessness.

Ken Follett
She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly.

Ken Follett
To someone standing in the nave, looking down the length of the church toward the east, the round window would seem like a huge sun exploding into innumerable shards of gorgeous color.

Ken Follett
She wanted to say 'I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage'...

Ken Follett
When you're thinking, please remember this: excessive pride is a familiar sin, but a man may just as easily frustrate the will of God through excessive humility.

Ken Follett
Ethel said: "Lloyd, there's someone here you may remember-" Daisy could not restrain herself. She ran to Lloyd and threw herself into his arms. She hugged him. She looked into his green eyes, then kissed his brown cheeks and his broken nose and then his mouth. "I love you, Lloyd," she sad madly. "I love you, I love you, I love you." "I love you, too, Daisy," he said. Behind her, Daisy heard Ethel's wry voice. "You do remember, I see.

Ken Follett
But the lesson of Abraham's story is that God demands the best we have to offer, that which is most precious to us.

Ken Follett
Having faith in God did not mean sitting back and doing nothing. It meant believing you would find success if you did your best honestly and energetically.

Ken Follett
It was an odd thing to do, to stand in a street in the hope of seeing someone who hardly knew him, but he did not want to move.

Ken Follett
Knotty theological questions are the least worrying of problems to me. Why? Because they will be resolved in the hereafter, and meanwhile they can be safely shelved.

Ken Follett
Why did people manufacture trouble when there was already so much of it in the world?

Ken Follett