Quotes from book

The Ministry of Fear

“We forget very easily what gives us pain.”

“A man kept his character even when he was insane.”

“One can't love humanity. One can only love people.”

“It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.”

“It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.”

“A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man…. It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous.”

“People don't like reality, they don't like common sense, until age forces it on them.”

“Thrillers are like life—more like life than you are … it’s what we’ve all made of the world.”

“In childhood we live under the brightness of immortality — heaven is as near and actual as the seaside. Behind the complicated details of the world stand the simplicities: God is good, the grown-up man or woman knows the answer to every question, there is such a thing as truth, and justice is as measured and faultless as a clock. Our heroes are simple: they are brave, they tell the truth, they are good swordsmen and they are never in the long run really defeated. That is why no later books satisfy us like those which were read to us in childhood—for those promised a world of great simplicity of which we knew the rules, but the later books are complicated and contradictory with experience; they are formed out of our own disappointing memories.”