Quotes from Martin Cruz Smith

They did not speak until the reception at the Marriott. The walls were edged with tables of blini, fish pie, and piroshki.

I used to have a big dog, a rottweiler, to guard the place. One night I was working late, and he was outside barking in the snow. He wouldn't stop. Then he stopped. I went out ten minutes later with a lamp, and there was a ring of wolves eating my dog.

You think we're going to pay for this?" "A thousand times." "Why?" Arkady asked. "Because God is such a bastard, He will take you away from me.

How did the distillers decide which part of their production was vodka and which was rubbing alcohol? Or did it matter? While

What's wonderful is to read the different translations - some done in 1600 and some in 1900 - of the same passage. It's fascinating to watch the same tale repeated in such a different way by two different centuries.

I never thought I would just be doing Arkady books.

I'm very aware when I'm speaking to the English of how flat my Mid-Atlantic American voice is.

Then there was the whole concept of coal mining, which is a culture unto itself, the most dangerous occupation in the world, and which draws and develops a certain kind of man.

If you take the contempt some Americans have for yuppies and multiply it by 10 you might come close to understanding their attitude towards the City, as they call it - London, the people of the south.

The most beautiful women in the world were African.

I've always been struck by how unsuspicious people are in general, if you tell them what you're about.

Then years back, when I moved to California, I happened to see a book about fashions of 19th-century Victorian England, only four pages of which was devoted to the dress of the working class.

The fact is that I loved being in England.

As a novelist, I tell stories and people give me money. Then financial planners tell me stories and I give them money.

The great thing about being a writer is that you are always re-creating yourself.

Because normal human activity is worse for nature than the greatest nuclear accident in history.

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.

The most beautiful women in the world were African.

Happiness is the maximum agreement of reality and desire.' 

Well, love was no fading violet; love was a weed that flourished in the dark. Has anyone ever explained it?

He never had been good at arguing with women; they tapped into pools of resentment over slights that had steeped for years.

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.

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.

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.