Eric Ambler > Quotes

“Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through it”
― Eric Ambler, Dirty Story

“Reality is always so obstructive.”
― Eric Ambler, Epitaph for a Spy

“Yet, when these facts are seen side by side with other facts in the case, it is difficult not to become lost in superstitious awe. Their very absurdity seems to prohibit the use of the words 'chance' and 'coincidence.' For the sceptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman Law, it is administered with sub-human inefficiency.”
― Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios

“Good' did not triumph. 'Evil' did not triumph. The two resolved, destroyed each other and created new 'evils', new 'goods' which slew each other in their turn.”
― Eric Ambler, Epitaph for a Spy

“The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet.”
― Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios

“In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner.”
― Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios

“In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest politician, but of the man with the best bedside manner. It is the decoration conferred on mediocrity by ignorance.”
― Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios

“In a dying civilisation, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician but of the man with the best beside manner. It is the decoration conferred on mediocrity by ignorance. Yet there remains one sort of political prestige that may still be worn with a certain pathetic dignity; it is that given to the liberal-minded leader of a party of conflicting doctrinaire extremists. His dignity is that of all doomed men: for, whether the two extremes proceed to mutual destruction or whether one of them prevails, doomed he is, either to suffer the hatred of the people or to die a martyr.”
― Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios

“A person who searched rooms, brandished pistols, dangled promises of half a million franc fees for nameless services and then wrote instructions to Polish spies might reasonably be regarded with suspicion. But suspicion of what?”
― Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios

“Ballet is merely a new rationalization of society's instinctive movement towards self-destruction. A dance of death for the Gadarene swine.”
― eric ambler, Cause for Alarm

“If such things were not so dangerous one would laugh. But one recognizes the technique. Such propaganda always begins with words, but soon it proceeds to deeds. When there are no facts to support lies, facts must be made.”
― Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios

“It was the power of Business, not the deliberations of statesman, that shaped the destinies of nations. The Foreign Ministers of the great powers might make the actual declarations of their Governments' policies; but it was the Big Business men, the bankers and their dependents, the arms manufacturers, the oil companies, the big industrialists, who determined what those policies should be.”
― Eric Ambler, Uncommon Danger

“Vociferous international audiences thronged the streets. Actually, it is nothing more nor less than an Italian version of Birmingham.”
― Eric Ambler, Cause for Alarm

“The pages of European history are, so to speak, bespattered with the records of Black Mondays and Black Thursdays. It may be that, in this twentieth century, almost daily acquaintance with large-scale catastrophe has deprived the custom of its point. Black and white have tended to merge into a drab grey.”
― Eric Ambler, Cause for Alarm

“I tell you this, my friend; all men are cowards. They dislike a fact except when it is so wrapped up in lies and sentiments that the sharp edge of it cannot hurt them. When a man tells the truth he his, depend upon it, a dangerous man.”
― Eric Ambler, Epitaph for a Spy

“They don't talk the same language as us. I don't mean that they don't speak English, but that their minds are different. They're like animals, and because I hate the sight and sound of them, and because you're a Britisher, I'm telling you to get out now while the going's good.”
― Eric Ambler, Uncommon Danger

“The truth about many of our great traditional patriots is ugly or ludicrous; but it makes no difference. They are defended angrily. National feeling in small states is always angry; it must be so, for its roots are in fear and self-doubt and for those things reason is no protection.”
― Eric Ambler, Judgment on Deltchev

“All over Europe, all over the world, men were spying. While in
government offices other men were tabulating the results of the spies'
labours; thicknesses of armour-plating, elevation angles of guns,
muzzles velocities, details of fire control mechanisms and
range-finders, fuse efficiencies, details of fortifications, positions
of ammunition stores, disposition of key factories, landmarks for
bombers. The world was getting ready to go to war. For the cannon-makers
and for the spies, business was good.”
― Eric Ambler, Epitaph for a Spy

“It was Napoleon who said that one spy in the right place was worth twenty thousand men in the field. He was speaking of his own spy, Schul-meister, a man of amazing courage, skill, and loyalty. But when the time came to reward Schulmeister for his services it was the same Napoleon who refused him the Legion of Honor for which he had been recommended, and the same Napoleon who commented that money was the only suitable reward for”
― Eric Ambler, Epitaph for a Spy

“A man's features, the bone structure and the tissue which covers it, are the product of a biological process; but his face he creates for himself. It is a statement of his habitual emotional attitude; the attitude which his desires need for fulfilment and which his fears demand for their protection of prying eyes. He wears it like a devil mask; a device to evoke in others the emotions complementary to his own. If he is afraid, then he must be feared; if he desires, then he must be desired. It is a screen to hide his mind's nakedness. Only a few men, painters, have been able to see the mind through the face. Other men in their judgements reach out for the evidence of word and deed that will explain the mask before their eyes. Yet, though they understand instinctively that the mask cannot be the man behind it; they are generally shocked by a demonstration of the fact. The duplicity of others must always be shocking when one is unconscious of one's own.”
― Eric Ambler, Mask of Dimitrios, The

“I tell you this, my friend; all men are cowards. They dislike a fact except when it is so wrapped up in lies and sentiments that the sharp edge of it cannot hurt them. When a man tells the truth he his, depend upon it, a dangerous man.”
― Eric Ambler, Epitaph for a Spy

“One goes through life like a flower with its face turned to the sun, ever seeking, ever hoping, wanting to trust others, but afraid to do so. How much better if we trusted one another, if we saw only the good things, the finer things in our fellow creatures! How much better if we were frank and open, if we went on our ways without the cloak of hypocrisy and lies that we wear now.”
― Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios

“I was born in Szabadka in Hungary. By the treaty of Trianon in 1919 Szabadka was incorporated in Yugoslav territory. In 1921 I went as a student to the University of Buda-Pesth. I obtained a Yugoslav passport for the purpose. While I was still at the University my father and elder brother were shot by the Yugoslav police for a political offense. My mother had died during the war and I had no other relations or friends. I was advised not to attempt to return to Yugoslavia. Conditions in Hungary were terrible. In 1922 I went to England, and remained there, teaching German in a school near London until 1931, when my labor permit was withdrawn. I was one of many other foreigners who had their labor permits withdrawn at that time. When my passport had expired I had applied for its renewal to the Yugoslav legation in London, but had been refused on the grounds that I was no longer a Yugoslav citizen. I had afterwards applied for British naturalization, but when I was deprived of my labor permit I was forced to find work elsewhere. I went to Paris. I was allowed by the police to remain and given papers with the proviso that if I left France I should not be permitted to return. I have since applied for French citizenship.”
― Eric Ambler, Epitaph for a Spy

“He says that it was people who were safe and well fed who invented good and evil so that they would not have to worry about the people who were hungry and unsafe. What a man does depends on what he needs. It is simple. You are not a murderer. You say that murder is evil. José would say that you are as much a murderer as Landru or Weidmann and that it is just that fortune has not made it necessary for you to murder anyone. Someone once told him that there was a German proverb which said that a man is an ape in velvet. He always likes to repeat it.”
― Eric Ambler, Journey Into Fear

“A man's features, the bone structure and the tissue which covers it, are the product of a biological process; but his face he creates for himself. It is a statement of his habitual emotional attitude; the attitude which his desires need for fulfilment and which his fears demand for their protection of prying eyes. He wears it like a devil mask; a device to evoke in others the emotions complementary to his own. If he is afraid, then he must be feared; if he desires, then he must be desired. It is a screen to hide his mind's nakedness.”
― Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios

“It came down to this: if I had not been arrested by the Turkish police, I would have been arrested by the Greek police.”
― Eric Ambler, The Light of Day

“Yes, Mr Latimer, most of us go through life without knowing what we want of it. But Dimitrios, you know, was not like that. Dimitrios knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted money and he wanted power.”
― Eric Ambler, A Coffin for Dimitrios

“but when you have been nourishing your soul on expectation, reality is apt to be disappointing.”
― Eric Ambler, The Dark Frontier

“We can learn only in the expectation of life. Europe is too preoccupied with its destruction to concern itself with such things. A condemned man is interested only in himself, the passage of hours and such intimations of immortality as he can conjure from the recesses of his mind.”
― Eric Ambler, Journey Into Fear

“International big business has made revolutions before now to safeguard its interests. At one time it made them … in the name of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Now, with Socialism to fight, it makes them in the name of Law and Order and Sound Finance. Assassination? If an assassination is going to be good for business, then there will be an assassination.”
― Eric Ambler , The Mask of Dimitrios