Martin Cruz Smith > Quotes

“The great thing about being a writer is that you are always re-creating yourself.”
― Martin Cruz Smith

“Because normal human activity is worse for nature than the greatest nuclear accident in history.”
― Martin Cruz Smith

“It was like a Russian party, Arkady thought. People got drunk, recklessly confessed their love, spilled their festering dislike, had hysterics, marched out, were dragged back in and revived with brandy. It wasn't a French salon.”
― Martin Cruz Smith

“Proust said that you could seduce any woman if you were willing to sit and listen to her complain until four in the morning.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park

“Stalin gothic was not so much an architectural style as a form of worship. Elements of Greek, French, Chinese and Italian masterpieces had been thrown into the barbarian wagon and carted to Moscow and the Master Builder Himself, who had piled them one on the other into the cement towers and blazing torches of His rule, monstrous skyscrapers of ominous windows, mysterious crenellations and dizzying towers that led to the clouds, and yet still more rising spires surmounted by ruby stars that at night glowed like His eyes. After His death, His creations were more embarrassment than menace, too big for burial with Him, so they stood, one to each part of town, great brooding, semi-Oriental temples, not exorcised but used.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park

“I looked you up, Arkady. You have a checkered career."
"I'm flattered. I was unaware of having any career at all.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, The Siberian Dilemma

“Happiness is the maximum agreement of reality and desire.’ ”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Polar Star

“He never had been good at arguing with women; they tapped into pools of resentment over slights that had steeped for years.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Tatiana

“Well, love was no fading violet; love was a weed that flourished in the dark. Has anyone ever explained it?”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park

“There are not many road signs in Russia, you know. He laughed. If you don't know where the road goes, you shouldn't be on it.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park

“How easily, without noticing, a man finds himself parallel to the life he meant to have, then arrives, years later, to find the band gone, flowers dead, love past.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Red Square

“The most beautiful women in the world were African.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Rose

“The only animal Zhenya was interested in petting was the sheep, because their fleece was always described in children’s books as so soft and white. Instead their fleece turned out to be gray and greasy and knotted with shit. For a long time he thought that was what clouds were like.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Three Stations

“Drunks sagged and leaned like broken pickets on a fence.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Red Square

“No problem. I can offer them sentiments from Blok: ‘John, you bourgeois son of a bitch, you can kiss me where I itch.’” Victor smiled with self-satisfaction. “Poetry for all occasions.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Three Stations

“Then she’s out of luck.” The way people talked about luck, it sounded to Emma like a spoonful of water in the desert. There just wasn’t enough to go around.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Three Stations

“Wolves eat dogs." That did seem to be the consensus of the village, Arkady thought. Roman shook his head as if he'd given the matter a lot of consideration. "Wolves hate dogs. Wolves hunt down dogs because they regard them as traitors. If you think about it, dogs are dogs only because of humans; otherwise they'd all be wolves, right? And where will we be when all the dogs are gone? It will be the end of civilization.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Wolves Eat Dogs

“In an unjust society a man may violate laws for valid social or economic reasons. In a just society there are no valid reasons except mental illness.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park

“Kali is the goddess of destruction, the Clawed Hands, the Blood Drinker... And that's one side of her, as it is for any god. If you knew her for thousands of years you'd know she could be all colors. The sky is black at night, but if your eyes were good enough, they could see the different lights of a million stars. Death is part of her because death is part of life.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Gypsy in Amber

“Arkady was an Investigator of Special Cases, and if a bear running loose in the heart of Moscow was not a special case, he didn't know what was.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, The Siberian Dilemma

“There are two kinds of vodka, good and very good.’ Who”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park

“But we should take heart from Lenin.” “Lenin?” Natasha perked up. “What did Lenin say about murder?” “Nothing. But about hesitation he said, ‘First action, then see what happens.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Polar Star

“Mystery books. I must read a hundred a year. . . I just wish some of them were harder to figure out.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Gypsy in Amber

“Between the intention and the act, life was often a tale told to the deaf. •”
― Martin Cruz Smith, The Girl from Venice

“From his room he took a towel and descended one deck to a small shower room with pegs and a sign that said A GOOD CITIZEN RESPECTS THE PROPERTY OF OTHERS. A handwritten”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Polar Star

“Your such a cynic.
Exactly, that's what you call a guy who tells you the truth.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, December 6

“The temperature was ten degrees below zero and Arkady began to freeze. It felt like burning on a spit.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Polar Star

“To capture the human cost of fallen empire with all its horror and absurdity, Sheets offers the right combination: the political insight of a top reporter and the power of a novelist.”
― Martin Cruz Smith

“She [Kali] does according to her wisdom in destroying what is useless or what has lived its destined time.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Gypsy in Amber

“He’d never thought before of what a catalog of experiences his exile had brought to him, how unique and beautiful they were, what clear evidence that on no day could a man be sure he should not open his eyes.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Red Square