Timothy Balding > Quotes

“I was never taught shame and I’ve never seen any profit at all in acquiring it. It is by far the most useless of emotions, don’t you think? Shame is a vice that only the innocent can afford.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“Le Pen and her counterparts on the extreme left have all come into the fold in recent years; they’ve become institutionalized. Impatient with their electoral failures, they perceived that they’d get nowhere near power unless they were accepted as good republicans”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“such was the nation’s compulsion to analyze absolutely everything to death.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“What a disgrace, thought Winkelmeier. But when a man has no moral sense, not a trace of it, and Yogi Akim was such a man, there is simply no limit to the vileness of the acts he is prepared to commit, no gradation in his depravity. Unless other men can obstruct him, that is, unless there is resistance.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“All was thus well and tranquil for the rulers of Bangistan, a resolute non-member of any collective organization of men and peoples, with no internal or external opposition to speak of. It could indeed have remained that way for the rest of time. Then the Akims had made their fatal move. They had joined Twitter”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“The powerful wrote the rules, that was all. It had always been thus and always would be. If everybody could be open and clear about that, it would considerably simplify international relations in general and his job in particular.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“Indeed, but it’s the fruit of many catastrophes,” said Blakely. “In the past, if one of them stumbled and fell, the whole flock would follow, tumbling down into the valley and breaking their necks. You know how sheep are.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“They took the same route as Blakely had followed on the Hawkins escapade, though they didn’t stop for the peppers, Cyrano, the pilgrims or the sausages.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“He fell to his knees, still smiling, and clasped his hands in prayer. Bogdanov had never been so happy in his life as at this moment of his death. Akim went behind the kneeling man, took out both his Luger pistols, and fired a bullet from each of them into the back of Bogdanov’s head.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“It’s funny, really, all these people voting to elect governments that essentially promise to reduce their rights.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“It’s vital in diplomacy to get the upper hand morally before you start killing people,”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“Perhaps Holden and his cohort of hawks nesting all over Washington were right: “You can’t argue with dictators, Winkelmeier,” he had once told him. “The only argument they understand is a bullet in the head.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“Olga found that there were many accounts for the Chinese President, perhaps not all of them legitimate, but that certainly wasn’t her problem. She opened one at random and read Xi’s first tweet out loud: “ ‘What is it about dictatorship that you don’t understand?’ ” “Good question!” said Yogi. “Now try Putin.” “‘My thoughts and prayers are with the Ukrainian people. At least what’s left of them’.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“As for the ordinary people, one might think that only those who live in terror in dictatorships like Bangistan deserve our absolution for choosing to ignore it.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“Very well. So, if we accept that the Indian reservations were the first enforced concentrations of groups of people, ethnic in this case …” “Which I don’t,” said Winkelmeier, “it was more complicated than that.” “Surely, surely,” smiled Akim. “It’s always more complicated to explain when the crimes are your own, Winkelmeier, isn’t it?”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“Wartime is different, Akim, you know that. A nation has to protect itself.” “I do believe Herr Hitler said something similar, Winkelmeier. But we are always at war, aren’t we?”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“I don’t know whether their lack of leadership, lack of a figurehead, the absence of a program, and their deep hatred of politicians, makes them more, or less, dangerous than the populist parties we see moving into government here and there. Probably less, I think, because they’ll finally be crushed by force if they keep going in the direction they’ve chosen.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“Watching the troop carriers disappear into the sun’s glare, Bogdanov experienced an ineffable moment of profound peace.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“regimes who incarnate the spirit of repression, regimes that rise to power against someone or something, but never for a confident and optimistic cause. I really don’t think we’re ready quite yet to climb out of the hole we continue to dig for ourselves, our noble human race.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts

“Akim saw clearly that Bogdanov was a man without ambition or worldly needs and therefore some one he could trust.”
― Timothy Balding, The Zucchini Conspiracy: A Novel of Alternative Facts