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

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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

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

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

“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

“A nurse the size of a shipping hazard peered over him and smiled. Some of her teeth were missing, some were gold, and the sight was so unnerving that Arkady hoped he wouldn’t give her cause to smile again.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, The Siberian Dilemma

“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

“The gaja might despise the Romany, but no Rom ever forgot his dead. For him, roaming over the earth were not only the half million Gypsies who drew breath but also the countless Gypsies who had gone before, restless spirits still wandering through cities and deserts, still real.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Gypsy in Amber

“Well, the Romanies have been around for five thousand years, longer than any nation. And why? Because we know how to survive. The Aryans tried to kill us, the Persians, the Tatars, the Magyars, the Africans, the Germans, everybody. But we stay together, and we move on, and we keep one thing in mind, to survive, and that is our greatest secret.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Gypsy in Amber

“Soviet times they had called it the tallest building in Moscow on the grounds that Siberia could be seen from its basement.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Hotel Ukraine

“Everyone is too young when their mother dies.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, The Siberian Dilemma

“Two days ago, I was lunching at the Writers Union with the eminent historian Tomashevski. That's the sort of man you should know. Respected, charming, hasn't produced a piece of work in ten years. He has a system, which he explained to me. First, he submits an outline for a biography to the Academy to be absolutely sure his approach is consistent with Party policy. A crucial first step, as you'll see later. Now, the person he studies is always an important figure - that is, someone from Moscow - hence Tomashevski must do his Russian research close to home for two years. But this historical character also traveled, yes, lived for some years in Paris or London; hence Tomashevski must do the same, apply for and receive permission for foreign residence. Four years have passed. The Academy and the Party are rubbing their hands in anticipation of this seminal study of the important figure by the eminent Tomashevski. And now Tomashevski must retire to the solitude of a dacha outside Moscow to tend his garden and creatively brood over his cartons of research. Two more years pass in seminal thought. And just as Tomashevski is about to commit himself to paper, he checks with the Academy again only to learn that Party policy has totally about-faced; his hero is a traitor, and with regrets all around, Tomashevski must sacrifice his years of labor for the greater good. Naturally, they are only too happy to urge Tomashevski to start a new project, to plow under his grief with fresh labor. Tomashevski is now studying a very important historical figure who lived for some time in the South of France. He says there is always a bright future for Soviet historians, and I believe him.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park

“What killed expert swimmers practicing underwater laps in pools was not a strangling on water but the soft oblivion of oxygen deprivation. At the end they no more than gently stirred, even if in the last lit cell in their brain they were still stroking powerfully ahead.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Havana Bay

“One out of every five mammals on the face of the earth is a bat.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, Nightwing