Daniel Silva > Quotes

“I can be whoever you want me to be: CIA, FBI, DIA, an agency so fucking secret you've never heard of it before." -Gabriel Allon”
― Daniel Silva, The Secret Servant

“To Pakistan? Or Afghanistan? Or Wherever-the-fuck-istan?”
― Daniel Silva, The Secret Servant

“So what are you planning to do with the rest of your life?
Develop a drinking problem. More Scotch, please.”
― Daniel Silva, The Marching Season

“Jews don't camp...The last time the Jews went camping, they spent forty years wandering in the desert.”
― Daniel Silva, The English Girl

“IT SEEMS DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE, but there was once a time when human beings did not feel the need to share their every waking moment with hundreds of millions, even billions, of complete and utter strangers. If one went to a shopping mall to purchase an article of clothing, one did not post minute-by-minute details on a social networking site; and if one made a fool of oneself at a party, one did not leave a photographic record of the sorry episode in a digital scrapbook that would survive for all eternity. But now, in the era of lost inhibition, it seemed no detail of life was too mundane or humiliating to share. In the online age, it was more important to live out loud than to live with dignity. Internet followers were more treasured than flesh-and-blood friends, for they held the illusive promise of celebrity, even immortality. Were Descartes alive today, he might have written: I tweet, therefore I am.”
― Daniel Silva, The Heist

“The secrets of survivors are not easily surrendered. They are locked away behind barricaded doors and accessed at great risk to those who possess them.”
― Daniel Silva, The Rembrandt Affair

“Only a man with a damaged canvas of his own can truly be a great restorer.”
― Daniel Silva, The Confessor

“But that’s the beauty of American cable news, darling. It doesn’t have to be credible. It just has to be entertaining.”
― Daniel Silva, Portrait of a Spy

“We did what we always do. We closed ranks, burned our files, and waited for the storm to pass.”
― Daniel Silva, The English Spy

“If you live to seek revenge, dig a grave for two. ANCIENT JEWISH PROVERB”
― Daniel Silva, Prince Of Fire

“On Yom Kippur, it is not enough for one to feel sorry for the foul deeds one has done. To achieve forgiveness, one must go to the injured parties and make amends.”
― Daniel Silva, The English Assassin

“When you're dealing with Switzerland, Mr. Allon, it's best to keep one thing in mind. Switzerland is not a real country. It's a business, and it's run like a business. It's a business that is constantly in a defensive posture. It's been that way for seven hundred years.”
― Daniel Silva, The English Assassin

“The best way to win at a game of chance is to remove chance from the equation.”
― Daniel Silva, The Heist

“Don’t look back. You are never completely alone.”
― Daniel Silva

“In the online age, it was more important to live out loud than to live with dignity.”
― Daniel Silva, The Heist

“Like many Vatican pronouncements, the official version of events would bear little resemblance to the truth.”
― Daniel Silva, The Black Widow

“The Germans are fond of saying that only Austria could convince the world that Beethoven was an Austrian and Hitler was a German.”
― Daniel Silva, A Death In Vienna

“I suppose I needed to share it with her. I suppose I needed someone to forgive me.”
― Daniel Silva, The Kill Artist

“To be honest with you, I’ve always felt a little Jewish.” “You have an aversion to shellfish and German opera?” “I was speaking in a spiritual sense.” “You’re a professional assassin, Keller.”
― Daniel Silva, The English Girl

“patriotism. During his lifetime of study he had concluded it was the most destructive force on the planet.”
― Daniel Silva

“To understand Russia today, you must understand the trauma of the nineties. Everything we had, everything we had been told, was swept away. We went from superpower to basket case overnight.”
― Daniel Silva, Moscow Rules

“We all leave behind bits of loose thread. Old operations, old enemies. They pull at you, like memories of old lovers.”
― Daniel Silva

“He looked older, harder, perhaps wiser. The Middle East was like that. It turned hope to despair, idealists into Machiavellians.”
― Daniel Silva, The Heist

“But I’ve come to realize that this continent is dying a slow death. Europe is receding quietly into history. It’s old and tired, and its young are so pessimistic about the prospects of the future they refuse to have enough children to ensure their own survival. They believe in nothing but their thirty-five-hour workweek and their August vacation.”
― Daniel Silva, The Secret Servant

“We are tempted to think that we have reached the end of history, that it can never happen again. But history is made every day, sometimes by men of evil. And all too often, history repeats itself. (Holy Father, the Pope)”
― Daniel Silva, The Fallen Angel

“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Send men that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which I give to the children of Israel; of every tribe of their fathers shall you send a man, every one a prince among them.” —Numbers 13:1-2”
― Daniel Silva, The Kill Artist

“The further we are from the last disaster, the closer we are to the next.”
― Daniel Silva, The Kill Artist

“The Europeans thought they could take in millions of immigrants from the poorest regions of the Muslim world and turn them into good little social democrats in a single generation. And look at the results. For the most part the Muslims of Europe are ghettoized and seething with anger.”
― Daniel Silva, The Secret Servant

“there was nothing more dangerous, he thought, than a patient man.”
― Daniel Silva, House of Spies

“He felt as though the bones of his ribcage were snapping beneath the weight of the stone that God had laid over his heart.”
― Daniel Silva, The Heist