Tom Rob Smith > Quotes

“There's nothing more stubborn than a fact. That is why you hate them so much. They offend you.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“To stand up for someone was to stitch your fate into the lining of theirs.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?”
― Tom Rob Smith, Agent 6

“Trust but check. Check on those we trust.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“—Isn’t this how it starts? You have a cause you believe in, a cause worth dying for. Soon, it’s a cause worth killing for. Soon, it’s a cause worth killing innocent people for.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“The price of this story was the audience's innocence.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“His hate wasn't professional; it was an obsession, a fixation, as if unrequited love had grown awful, twisted into something ugly.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“...Except when I was alone. I'd hate myself. It's how we feel about ourselves when we're alone that must guide our decisions.”
― Tom Rob Smith, The Farm

“Leo, I have another secret. I've fallen in love with you.”

"I've always loved you.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“Trust but check”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“If he wanted to hear about love, the first verse was his to sing.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“The survival of their political system justified anything. The promise of a golden age where none of this brutality would exist, where everything would be in plenty and poverty would be a memory, justified anything.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“sentimentality could blind a man to the truth. Those who appear the most trustworthy deserve the most suspicion.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“Let me quickly remind you that the allegation of being mentally incapable is a tried and tested method of silencing women dating back hundreds of years, a weapon to discredit us when we fought against abuses and stood up to authority.”
― Tom Rob Smith, The Farm

“The system required the consent of everyone, even if they consented by doing nothing.”
― Tom Rob Smith, The Secret Speech

“We should measure a man by what they’re prepared to do themselves. Not by what they’re prepared to have others do for them.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“....a man both handsome and repulsive in equal measure-as if his good looks were plastered over a rotten centre, a hero's face with a henchman's heart.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“A person can always be sure of what they don't know. They might not be sure of what they know.”
― Tom Rob Smith

“The duty of an investigator was to scratch away at innocence until guilt was uncovered. If no guilt was uncovered then they hadn’t scratched deep enough.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“will not let the best part of us go extinct.” “What part is that?” “Our foibles, our eccentricities, our capacity to love.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Cold People

“Was the difference merely that Vasili was senselessly cruel while he’d been idealistically cruel? One was an empty, indifferent cruelty while the other was a principled, pretentious cruelty which thought of itself as reasonable and necessary.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“I’d mistaken familiarity for insight and equated hours spent together as a measure of understanding.”
― Tom Rob Smith, The Farm

“—When the police are criminals, the criminals must become the police. The innocent must live underground, in the shit of the city, while the villains live in warm apartments. The world is upside down: I’m merely turning it the right way up.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44 and The Secret Speech: Digital Omnibus Edition

“I want to tell you the story about a man.

While other people were laughing and drinking, this man would just walk until he reached the exact same spot, where he'd sit with his back to all those people---
While he did everything to signal to the world that he wanted to be left alone---
More than anything, he hoped someone would understand that what he really wanted was the exact opposite, and that this 'someone' would sit next to him and strike up a conversation.

I was that man. You were that 'someone'.”
― Tom Rob Smith, London Spy: The Complete Scripts

“I thought upon the way in which we'd always shared each other's happiness, believing it would make the moment burn brighter and longer, but sadness can be shared too, perhaps sharing makes is burn briefer and less bright.”
― Tom Rob Smith

“—I need to meet you.”
― Tom Rob Smith, The Secret Speech

“There was no chance you could be found innocent inside these walls. It was an assembly line of guilt.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“Precautionary measure. With those words any deaths could be justified. Better to destroy your own people than there be a chance a German soldier might find a loaf of bread.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“For decades no one had taken action according to what they believed was right or wrong but by what they thought would please their Leader. People”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“ruthlessness. Leo was trapped. He couldn’t claim the”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44