Ken Follett quotes - page 2

The thriller is the most popular literary genre of the 20th century. (Ken Follett)
My favorite period is World War II, and I'm in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era.
Ken Follett
An awful lot of thriller writers write women rather badly. So just doing it OK gets a lot of credit.
Ken Follett
I enjoy learning technical details.
Ken Follett
I don't think there's any great mystery to writing female characters, so long as you talk to them. If you lived in a monastery and never met any women, maybe it would be difficult.
Ken Follett
A very good editor is almost a collaborator.
Ken Follett
Most of my stories have some basis in fact.
Ken Follett
James Bond is quite serious about his drinks and clothing and cigarettes and food and all that sort of thing. There is nothing wry or amused about James Bond.
Ken Follett
World War II is the greatest drama in human history, the biggest war ever and a true battle of good and evil. I imagine writers will continue to get stories from it, and readers will continue to love them, for many more years.
Ken Follett
Thrillers have been traditionally very masculine books; the women characters often rather decorative.
Ken Follett
Culture clash is terrific drama. (Ken Follett)
Movies have influenced all writers, not just thriller writers.
Ken Follett
The CIA's research program is described in a book called The Search for the Manchurian Candidate.
Ken Follett
With hindsight, we see that the Soviet Union never had a chance of world domination, but we didn't know that then.
Ken Follett
I use a professional researcher in New York who does all the legwork, all that stuff which would take me days and weeks of calling, waiting for people to call back.
Ken Follett
The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying.
Ken Follett
We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary.
Ken Follett
I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have.
Ken Follett
There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.
Ken Follett
When I'm writing a woman character, I don't think, 'What would a woman do?' I just think, 'What would this character do in this situation?'
Ken Follett
Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer. (Ken Follett)
When you've lost everything, you've got nothing to lose.
Ken Follett
After a certain point, most people, including editors, will tell you everything you do is great.
Ken Follett
People are much more complicated in real life, but my characters are as subtle and nuanced as I can make them. But if you say my characters are too black and white, you've missed the point. Villains are meant to be black-hearted in popular novels. If you say I have a grey-hearted villain, then I've failed.
Ken Follett
She was unique: there was something abnormal about her, and it was that abnormal something that made her magnetic.
Ken Follett