Harold Robbins > Quotes

“Kids are a pain in the ass.”
― Harold Robbins, The Piranhas

“Sometimes something happens and you find that all the people you knew are like nothing and someone you never saw before will reach out a hand to help.”
― Harold Robbins, Never Leave Me

“The only thing of value on this earth is that each of us is an individual and not a cog in a machine. No man is better than another because of circumstance or fortune, but each important to his own.”
― Harold Robbins, Never Leave Me

“Every man has his price. For some it's money, for some it's women, for others glory. But the honest man you don't have to buy - he winds up costing you nothing.”
― Harold Robbins, The Carpetbaggers

“I was not a great man whose history has been recorded for children to study in school. No bells will ring for me, no flags descend upon their mast. For I was an ordinary man, my son, one of many, with ordinary hopes and ordinary dreams and ordinary fears. I, too, dreamed of wealth and riches, health and strength. I, too, feared hunger and poverty, war and weakness. I was the neighbour who lived in the next house. The man standing in the subway on his way to work: who held a match to his cigarette: who walked with his dog. I was the soldier shaking with fear: the man berating the umpire at the ball game: the citizen in the privacy of the voting booth, happily electing the worthless candidate. I was the man who lived a thousand times and died a thousand times in all man’s six thousand years of record. I was the man who sailed with Noah  in his ark, who was the multitude that crossed the sea that Moses held apart, who hung from the cross next to Christ. I was the ordinary man about whom songs are never written, stories are never told, legends are never remembered.”
― Harold Robbins, A Stone for Danny Fisher

“To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.”
― Harold Robbins, A Stone for Danny Fisher

“People are not like a business. You can’t buy and sell them like so much property. You can’t lock them up in a vault and expect them to appreciate it.”
― Harold Robbins, Never Leave Me

“It was either live in the shadow of the fear all our lives or, once and for all, break free of it and have all the things we wanted. That was the whole of it. We had to be free of the fear so that we could think of tomorrow, a tomorrow we had been afraid to look into because it looked so much like yesterday.”
― Harold Robbins, A Stone for Danny Fisher

“Funny how you can go along for years hardly thinking about someone, then all of a sudden be so glad to see him.”
― Harold Robbins, The Carpetbaggers

“But, darling, you’re my world, my life.” She kissed me. “And what will you do? You have no job—nothing. How will you live? I can’t bear to think of you going back to those cheap little jobs. Here with me you are safe. I can look after you, protect you. I can give you the world—anything you want.” I remembered something I had read. “What does it profit a man,” I quoted, “if in gaining the world he loses his own soul?”
― Harold Robbins, Never Love a Stranger

“She's been brought up without love and has no understanding of it.”
― Harold Robbins, 79 Park Avenue

“It wasn’t too tough a trip. There were many others like me riding the rods for one reason or another, some heading nowhere in particular—people without anchors, just drifting along. Others were going someplace definite—home or to a new place where a job might be found. They too were like other people, some nice and helpful, some nasty and mean, but on the whole I got along. I minded my own business, never stayed on one train too long, jumped off at an occasional town along the route to hole up for a day and night in a cheap room and eat a few decent meals, and then I’d be on my way again.”
― Harold Robbins, Never Love a Stranger

“I think I’ll be moving on tomorrow,” she said. “What for? Got anything better to do?” She shook her head. “No. But this isn’t my bag. You know that. These cars don’t make any noise.” “Someday all cars won’t make noise,” he said.”
― Harold Robbins, The Betsy

“Ten years! It was queer. Fennelli hadn’t changed much in ten years, but I knew I had. I wondered how he recognized me so readily. Maybe it was something about the way I looked; maybe it was the situation. I don’t know. I couldn’t understand. I went back a long way. For the first time in a long while, I thought about the folks and wondered what they were doing and where they were, and about the kids I used to know—Jerry and Marty and Janet. What had happened to them? But it was such a long time ago it was hard to remember. I remembered breakfast with the folks: the smell of the rolls, slightly warm from the bakery after I had just brought them in—the way my aunt would smile at me. I remembered high school and the kids laughing as we crossed the big yard going home. I remembered so many things, and all of a sudden I began to feel old and tired.”
― Harold Robbins, Never Love a Stranger

“Friends are more than just people who will listen to what you have to say and agree with you. Sometimes they have to tell you things you don’t want to hear for your own sake. Please listen to what we have to say.”
― Harold Robbins, Never Love a Stranger

“I don't really care whether I live that long or not, It's just that when I die, I dont want to leave any enemies, and I figure the only way to do that is to outlive them all.”
― Harold Robbins, The Carpetbaggers

“I walked over to her. She took my hand. “You’re a fine kid, Frank. There’s something wild and hard inside you that needs gentling, but there’s also something fine and bright inside you. Whatever you do, don’t change. Don’t lose that something that keeps you from being hard and rotten.” She laughed. “I must be getting old,” she said, “to be talking like that.” She took another drink from the table. I was silent. The old dame kind of liked me. “Well?” she asked. “Good-bye,” I said. On an impulse I bent and kissed her cheek. It was old and dry to the touch, like a piece of old paper. She put her hand to her cheek half wonderingly. She thought aloud: “It has been a long time since—” Her words trailed off.”
― Harold Robbins, Never Love a Stranger

“He picked up the telephone on his desk. “Bring in the Cord loan agreement and the check.” “You will note,” he said, “that although the loan is for three hundred thousand dollars, we have extended your credit under this agreement to a maximum of five hundred thousand dollars.” He smiled at me. “One of my principles of banking, Mr. Cord. I don’t believe in budgeting my clients too closely. Sometimes a few dollars more make the difference between success and failure.” Suddenly”
― Harold Robbins, The Carpetbaggers

“And far down the hill, below her, the multicolored lights of Los Angeles shimmered through her tears.”
― Harold Robbins, The Lonely Lady

“got to my feet and stretched. This sitting at a desk for half a day was worse than anything I’d ever done. “O.K., I’ll go right up.” McAllister”
― Harold Robbins, The Carpetbaggers

“indictment”
― Harold Robbins, 79 Park Avenue

“From the judge who lifted the Philadelphia ban on Never Love a Stranger, on Harold’s books: “I would rather my daughter learn about sex from the pages of a Harold Robbins novel than behind a barn door.” On writing essentials: “Power, sex, deceit, and wealth: the four ingredients to a successful story.” On the drive to write: “I don’t want to write and put it in a closet because I’m not writing for myself. I’m writing to be heard. I’m writing because I’ve got something to say to people about the world I live in, the world I see, and I want them to know about it.”
― Harold Robbins, Never Love a Stranger

“Now the union leaders were as effectively isolated from the rank and file of their organization as any executive of the companies with which they did battle. Suddenly Daniel knew what it was. A new hierarchy was in the process of developing. Sooner or later, the man inside that office, behind the closed door, had to lose touch with the people outside, those whom he represented. No longer was there an emotional relationship. Now it was a calculated representation of an ideal that itself had turned into another form of big business.”
― Harold Robbins, Memories of Another Day

“You’re getting two C-notes and a one-way ticket. Make sure you never come back this way.” He jerked back on her finger. She screamed. “You broke it!” “Your friend don’t want to hear from you again, no how, capiche?” She sobbed, dizzy, ready to pass out. “Now when I say no how, he don’t want to hear from any lawyer, either. You capiche that?”
― Harold Robbins, Sin City

“Life is good.. for the good!”
― Harold Robbins, The Stallion

“On the inspiration for Never Love a Stranger: “[The book begins with] a poem from To the Unborn by Stella Benson. There were a lot of disappointments especially during the Depression—fuck it—in everyone’s life there are disappointments and lost hope…. No one escapes. That’s why you got to be grateful every day that you get to the next.”
― Harold Robbins, Never Love a Stranger

“I thought so too,” he said, shaking his head, “but now I don’t know. I had hoped that by working with the people, we would forget the old animosities and differences. That’s the only way for us to get along: by working together in a common effort. That way we’d get to know each other and understand that each of us are looking for the same thing. Then we wouldn’t have any differences.”
― Harold Robbins, Never Love a Stranger

“Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.”
― Harold Robbins, Memories of Another Day

“I was in Germany in 1935,” he began seriously. “I saw what happened there—what happens to a country when gangsters take over.” “Are you talking about Hitler?” I asked. “What’s he got to do with me?” I fished for a cigarette. I remembered what had happened last June when France fell. People walked around in the streets talking in subdued voices, looking bad. There was a great deal of muttering about going to war with Germany. Business fell off a few days but jumped back to normal quickly enough. I think it even picked up a little. But we didn’t go to war and I didn’t think we would—especially if we kept on minding our own business.”
― Harold Robbins, Never Love a Stranger

“A man is a thousand parts, All of them other people.” -Harold Robbins in The Inheritors”
― Harold Robbins