Daniel Silva Quotes

Daniel Silva

Daniel Silva is an American journalist and author of thriller and spy novels. (Daniel Silva Quotes)

“A man who is pleased with himself can be an adequate restorer but only a man with a damaged canvas of his own can be a truly great restorer.”
Daniel Silva
The Fallen Angel

“A nuclear bomb can only be dropped once. But money can be wielded every day with no fallout and no threat of mutually assured destruction.”
Daniel Silva
The Cellist

“A proper cover was like a shield. The typical undercover Office field agent spent far more time maintaining his cover than actually gathering intelligence. Cover, they told her, was everything.”
Daniel Silva
The Black Widow

“A very wise man once told me that hope is not an acceptable strategy when lives are at stake. – Gabriel Allon”
Daniel Silva
Portrait of a Spy

“According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, forty-nine media professionals have been killed in Russia since 1992. Only in Iraq and Algeria have more died in the line of duty during the same period. This, too, is a Russian tragedy.”
Daniel Silva
The Defector

“After more than five years, some agents might be tempted to become complacent. Catherine would never become complacent. It was one of the reasons she survived when others had been arrested and hanged.”
Daniel Silva
The Unlikely Spy

“And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life, it’s that everyone has a price. – Ari Shamron”
Daniel Silva
The Defector

“And once, during an Oval Office meeting with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador to Washington, Trump divulged highly classified intelligence supplied by a close ally in the Middle East—intelligence that was so sensitive it was not shared widely within the US government.”
Daniel Silva
The Cellist

“And we both know the cardinal rule when it comes to assassinations. It’s not important who fires the shot. It’s who pays for the bullet. – Graham Seymour”
Daniel Silva
The English Spy

“Any fool can slide down the mountain, but it takes someone of character and discipline walk up one. – Luigi Donati”
Daniel Silva
The Order

“But I’ve come to realize that this continent is dying a slow death. Europe is receding quietly into history. It’s old and tired, and its young are so pessimistic about the prospects of the future they refuse to have enough children to ensure their own survival. They believe in nothing but their thirty-five-hour workweek and their August vacation.”
Daniel Silva
The Secret Servant

“But that’s the beauty of American cable news, darling. It doesn’t have to be credible. It just has to be entertaining.”
Daniel Silva
Portrait of a Spy

“Chiara believed there was no malady that could not be cured by a bit of mineral water or a glass of good red wine.”
Daniel Silva
The Rembrandt Affair

“Civility is for divorced couples with children. – Chiara”
Daniel Silva
The Messenger

“Computer files are a bit like sin, Excellency. They can be absolved, but they never really go away. – Gabriel Allon”
Daniel Silva
The Order

“Do unto others before they have a chance to do unto you.”
Daniel Silva
Portrait of a Spy

“Don’t you know that Al-Azhar is a hotbed of Islamic militancy? It is been thoroughly penetrated by the forces of Al Qaeda and the Muslim brotherhood. – Gabriel Allon”
Daniel Silva
The Messenger

“Employers had learned long ago that the online presence of an individual spoke volumes about his character.”
Daniel Silva
The Heist

“Everything I did, I did as a matter of conscience.”
Daniel Silva
The Other Woman

“For every terrorist we kill, there’s another boy waiting to step forward and pick up the stone or the gun. They’re like shark’s teeth: break one and another will rise in its place.” (Daniel Silva Quotes)
Daniel Silva
The Kill Artist

“French and Swiss villages existed side by side along a largely invisible border, but Switzerland did not wish to wipe France from the map. Nor did the Swiss beseech their sons to shed the blood of French infidels.”
Daniel Silva
The Black Widow

“Gabriel thought it was the darkest day in American history since 9/11, though somehow worse. The attack had been launched not by a distant enemy but by the occupant of the Oval Office.”
Daniel Silva
The Cellist

“Gabriel was remarried, a father, and the chief of the Office. The restorer was restored.”
Daniel Silva
The Black Widow

“Having been brought to the brink of insolvency, Switzerland’s largest banks had been forced to suffer the indignity of a government bailout. Sensing weakness, foreign tax collectors were now clamoring for Swiss financial institutions to lift the veil of secrecy that had shielded their clients for centuries. The gnomes of Zurich, among the wiliest of God’s creatures, had instinctively taken shelter and were waiting patiently for the inclement weather to pass.”
Daniel Silva
The Rembrandt Affair

“He felt as though the bones of his ribcage were snapping beneath the weight of the stone that God had laid over his heart.”
Daniel Silva
The Heist

“He looked older, harder, perhaps wiser. The Middle East was like that. It turned hope to despair, idealists into Machiavellians.”
Daniel Silva
The Heist

“He was afraid that if communism collapsed, the Soviet Union would no longer serve as a beacon for those in the West who believed capitalism to be unjust.” “The useful idiots.”
Daniel Silva
The Other Woman

“He was no longer in Russia, he thought. He was in a tsarist dreamland, imported from the West and built by terrorized peasants. Florence called to him from the facades of the Baroque palaces, and, crossing the Moyka River, he dreamed of Venice. He wondered how many bodies lay beneath the ice. Thousands, he thought. Tens of thousands. No other city in the world concealed the horrors of its past more beautifully than St. Petersburg.”
Daniel Silva
The English Girl

“He was xenophobic, intolerant, distrustful of the free press, and had little patience for niceties such as parliamentary democracy or the rule of law.”
Daniel Silva
The Order

“He who has two women lose his soul. But he who has two homes loses his mind. – ancient proverb”
Daniel Silva
House of Spies

“He who lives an immoral life dies an immoral death. —Corsican proverb”
Daniel Silva
The English Girl

“Heaven knows I am no expert, but it seems to me the terrorism game is a bit like the art trade. It has its peaks and valleys, its good seasons and bad, but it never goes away. – Julian Isherwood”
Daniel Silva
Portrait of a Spy

“His civilization had flourished for thousands of years in the harsh and unforgiving land of Mesopotamia before anyone had ever heard of a place called America. And it would survive long after the great American experiment receded into history. Of this, Saladin was certain. All great empires eventually collapsed. Only Islam was forever.”
Daniel Silva
The Black Widow

“How about a global pandemic? A novel strain of influenza for which we humans have no natural defense.”
Daniel Silva
The Order

“I am a soldier of Allah, but a great admirer of Winston Churchill. And it was Churchill who said that in wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
Daniel Silva
The Black Widow

“I can be whoever you want me to be: CIA, FBI, DIA, an agency so fucking secret you’ve never heard of it before.” -Gabriel Allon”
Daniel Silva
The Secret Servant

“I don’t need to try it. I tried it once, and I liked it very much. – Chiara”
Daniel Silva
The Messenger

“I suppose I needed to share it with her. I suppose I needed someone to forgive me.”
Daniel Silva
The Kill Artist

“If you live to seek revenge, dig a grave for two.”
Daniel Silva
Prince of Fire

“In a world gone mad, America is still the last best hope.”
Daniel Silva
Prince of Fire

“In Russia you cannot succeed or become wealthy unless someone in a position of power or influence places his hand on your shoulder. – Oksana Akimova”
Daniel Silva
The Cellist

“In the online age, it was more important to live out loud than to live with dignity.”
Daniel Silva
The Heist

“Indeed, there were more blank spots on the canvas than those covered with pigment. Gabriel effectively had to repaint the entire work, incorporating the small”
Daniel Silva
The English Assassin

“Intentionally rude and vulgar, he took pleasure in the discomfort of others.”
Daniel Silva
The Cellist

“Islamic extremism is just the latest virus to thrive in Europe’s nurturing environment. – Gabriel Allon”
Daniel Silva
The Secret Servant

“It is a truism that no profession welcomes the end of the work week with more anticipation than teachers.”
Daniel Silva
The New Girl

“It is not a question of whether France will be attacked by terrorists again but only a question of when and where. It is a sad fact that more lives will be lost to the fires of extremism. Regrettably, this is what it means to be a citizen of Europe in the twenty-first century. – French president”
Daniel Silva
Portrait of a Spy

“It is said that travelers who approach Geneva by train from Zurich are frequently so overcome by its beauty that they hurl their return tickets out of the window and vow never to leave.”
Daniel Silva
The New Girl

“It was a technique as old as the bazaar, the willingness to walk away from a deal.”
Daniel Silva
House of Spies

“It was clear of snow and ice. When the wind briefly subsided, Gabriel caught a whiff of the deicer the Russians used to achieve this result. He remembered stories Mikhail had told him about the powerful chemicals Russians poured onto their streets and sidewalks. The stuff could destroy a pair of shoes in a matter of days. Even the dogs refused to walk on it. In springtime, the streetcars used to burst into flames because their wiring had been eaten away by months of exposure. That was how Mikhail had celebrated the arrival of spring as a child in Russia—with the burning of the trams.”
Daniel Silva
The Defector

“It was stolen from the Jews on the way to the gas chambers, and I want it back.”
Daniel Silva
A Death in Vienna

“It’s been ten years since 9/11. Ten years, Gabriel repeated, and Saudi Arabia is still a cash machine for terrorists and Sunni extremist groups. There’s only one possible explanation. The deal with the devil has been renewed. The House of Saud is willing to turn a blind eye to Islamic terror as long as the secret rage is directed outward, away from the oil fields.” (Daniel Silva Quotes)
Daniel Silva
Portrait of a Spy

“It’s hard to go old-school in the modern world. Gabriel Allon”
Daniel Silva
The English Spy

“Jews don’t camp…The last time the Jews went camping, they spent forty years wandering in the desert.”
Daniel Silva
The English Girl

“Langley estimates that because of global warming, the south of England will one day be among the world’s largest producers of premium wine.”
Daniel Silva
The Black Widow

“Left to its own devices, the Kingdom would return to what it once was, an arid land of warring desert nomads.”
Daniel Silva
The New Girl

“Life of a professional spy as one of constant travel and mind-numbing boredom broken by interludes of sheer terror.”
Daniel Silva
The English Spy

“Like many Vatican pronouncements, the official version of events would bear little resemblance to the truth.”
Daniel Silva
The Black Widow

“Many problems of the Arab world. The lack of education and jobs, the brutal dictators, the repression of women.”
Daniel Silva
House of Spies

“My business is hurting, too. Everyone on the street is in trouble. I never thought I would say this, but the world was a much better place when the Americans were still rich.”
Daniel Silva
The Rembrandt Affair

“On Yom Kippur, it is not enough for one to feel sorry for the foul deeds one has done. To achieve forgiveness, one must go to the injured parties and make amends.”
Daniel Silva
The English Assassin

“Only the spoon,” replied the don, “knows the pot’s sorrows.”
Daniel Silva
House of Spies

“Our mistakes always come back to haunt us. And eventually all debts come due.”
Daniel Silva
The English Spy

“Our president understands that he who controls history controls the future. – Sergei Korovin”
Daniel Silva
The Defector

“Patience and follow-through aren’t typical American virtues. You like to make a mess and move on to the next problem. – Gabriel Allon”
Daniel Silva
The Messenger

“Perhaps the Allies will engage in some trickery. A diversionary landing, perhaps as you yourself have suggested, my Fuhrer. But the real strike will come here.”
Daniel Silva
The Unlikely Spy

“Remember, darling, one normally doesn’t part with the Rembrandt because one is tired of looking at it. One parts with because one needs money. And the last thing a rich person wants is to tell the world that he’s not rich anymore. – Julian Isherwood”
Daniel Silva
The Rembrandt Affair

“Russia will never be a democracy again, Allon. We cannot live as normal people.”
Daniel Silva
The Cellist

“Russian men don’t always make the best fathers. Unfortunately, is is a cultural trait they pass on to their sons. – Elena Kharkov”
Daniel Silva
Moscow Rules

“Shamron knew time could be hard on Russian men. They tended to age in the blink of an eye — young and virile one minute, wrinkled paper the next.”
Daniel Silva
The Defector

“She believed that “British cuisine” was an oxymoron”
Daniel Silva
The Mark of the Assassin

“She had read once that the recovery time from a romantic relationship is equal to the life span of the relationship itself.”
Daniel Silva
The Rembrandt Affair

“She was also a gifted liar who had never been saddled with a cumbersome moral compass.”
Daniel Silva
The Mark of the Assassin

“Since when has your team ever functioned smoothly? You’re Israelis. You fight with one another constantly. – Sarah Bancroft”
Daniel Silva
Portrait of a Spy

“Snow drifted over the Herengracht as he made his way slowly toward the houseboat on the Amstel. A pair of cyclists glided silently past, leaving ribbons of black in the fresh snow. Evening in a foreign city always made him melancholy. Lights coming on, offices letting out, bars and cafés slowly filling. Through the broad windows of the canal houses he could see parents coming home to children, husbands coming home to wives, lovers reuniting, warm lights burning. Life, he thought. Someone else’s life, someone else’s homeland.”
Daniel Silva
The Kill Artist

“So what are you planning to do with the rest of your life? Develop a drinking problem. More Scotch, please.”
Daniel Silva
The Marching Season

“Sometimes it is better to give an opponent a small victory then suffer a devastating defeat yourself. Gabriel Allon”
Daniel Silva
The Messenger

“That evening, a once-unfathomable sentence, composed by columnist Thomas L. Friedman, appeared in the New York Times: “There is overwhelming evidence that our president, for the first time in our history, is deliberately or through gross negligence or because of his own twisted personality engaged in treasonous behavior.”
Daniel Silva
The Cellist

“The Arab Spring had turned into the Arab Calamity. Radical Islam now controlled a swath of territory that stretched from Afghanistan to Nigeria, an accomplishment that even Bin Laden would have never dreamed possible.”
Daniel Silva
The English Spy

“The best way to win at a game of chance is to remove chance from the equation.”
Daniel Silva
The Heist

“The cardinal rule when it comes to assassinations. It’s not important who fires the shot. It’s who pays for the bullet.”
Daniel Silva
The English Spy

“The CIA program known as “extraordinary rendition,” the practice of clandestinely transferring suspected terrorists from one country to another for the purposes of incarceration or interrogation, has been well documented. It was put into place not by President George W. Bush but by his predecessor, Bill Clinton.”
Daniel Silva
The Secret Servant

“The cruelty of the desert had influenced the faith.”
Daniel Silva
The New Girl

“The Europeans thought they could take in millions of immigrants from the poorest regions of the Muslim world and turn them into good little social democrats in a single generation. And look at the results. For the most part the Muslims of Europe are ghettoized and seething with anger.”
Daniel Silva
The Secret Servant

“The first attempted coup in the history of the United States of America had failed.”
Daniel Silva
The Cellist

“The further we are from our last disaster, the closer we are to our next.”
Daniel Silva
The Kill Artist

“The gentle melancholia that afflicts country people when the warm weather is ending.”
Daniel Silva
The Unlikely Spy

“The Germans are fond of saying that only Austria could convince the world that Beethoven was an Austrian and Hitler was a German.”
Daniel Silva
A Death in Vienna

“The great Ari Shamron was eternal, but the vessel in which his spirit resided would not last forever.”
Daniel Silva
The English Girl

“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Send men that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which I give to the children of Israel; of every tribe of their fathers shall you send a man, everyone a prince among them.” (Daniel Silva Quotes)
Daniel Silva
The Kill Artist

“The men and women pray separately,” the Saudi observed archly. “Much to the dismay of more liberal Jews.” “Perhaps we can change that.” “Shwaya, shwaya,” said Gabriel.”
Daniel Silva
The New Girl

“The notion that modern England might not be a cultural paradise appeared to come as a shock to Brady Boswell. He was one of those Americans who formed their impressions of life in the United Kingdom by watching reruns of Masterpiece Theater. ”
Daniel Silva
House of Spies

“The occupants of the other three looked like the people they had seen rioting in the streets of Paris that morning. They were citizens of the other France, the France one didn’t read about in guidebooks. They were the put-upon and the left-behind, the ones without glittering degrees from elite institutions of learning. Globalization and automation had eroded their value in the workforce. The service economy was their only option. Their counterparts in Britain and America had already had their say at the ballot box. France, reckoned Gabriel, would be next.”
Daniel Silva
The New Girl

“The owner doesn’t ask questions about where the painting has been. He’s just happy to have it hanging on his wall again.”
Daniel Silva
Prince of Fire

“The prime minister listened raptly as Shamron brought him up-to-date. He was by nature a schemer. He had begun his career in the cutthroat atmosphere of academia, then moved to the hornets’ nest at the Foreign Ministry. By the time he entered the political arena, he was well versed in the black arts of bureaucratic treachery. His meteoric rise through the party ranks was attributed to his powerful intellect and his willingness to resort to subterfuge, misdirection, and outright blackmail to get what he wanted.”
Daniel Silva
The Kill Artist

“The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, taught us there were Five Pillars of Islam. We believe there is a sixth. Jihad is not a choice. It is an obligation. The al-Saud understand this. Once again, they are willing to look the other way, provided the brothers don’t make trouble inside the Kingdom. That was Bin Laden’s biggest”
Daniel Silva
Portrait of a Spy

“The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic.” And it is rapidly taking on many functions of a modern state, issuing its citizenry everything from driver’s permits to fishing licenses.”
Daniel Silva
The Black Widow

“The rule of thumb is that the stolen painting ratings ten percent of its value on the black market. If the Caravaggio were worth fifty million on the open market, with such five million dirty. – Maurice Durand”
Daniel Silva
The Heist

“The Russian president is not a statesman, Isabel. He is the godfather of a nuclear-armed gangster regime. They are not ordinary, run-of-the-mill gangsters. They are Russian gangsters, which means they are among the cruelest, most violent people on earth.”
Daniel Silva
The Cellist

“The secrets of survivors are not easily surrendered. They are locked away behind barricaded doors and accessed at great risk to those who possess them.”
Daniel Silva
The Rembrandt Affair

“The sky was a dome of pale blue streaked with alabaster. Crossing the Stephansplatz, he was nearly toppled by the wind. It was an Arctic wind, chilled by the fjords and glaciers of Norway, strengthened by the icy plains of Poland, and now it was hammering against the gates of Vienna like a barbarian horde.”
Daniel Silva
A Death in Vienna

“The Society practiced democracy internally, even though most of its members believed it was a rather cumbersome concept in the real world. The Society’s founding creed declared peace was dangerous. Its members believed constant controlled global tension served the interests of all. It prevented complacency. It maintained vigilance. It built national identity. And most of all it made them money, a good deal of money.”
Daniel Silva
The Mark of the Assassin

“The soil of the sacred city is filled with the remnants of empires that miscalculated. Jerusalem is the city of God. But it is also a gravestone to the folly of man.”
Daniel Silva
The Fallen Angel

“The truly powerful man, said Shamron never had to ask for a favor.”
Daniel Silva
House of Spies

“The world was not a dangerous place spinning rapidly out of control; it was a problem to be managed by men and women of competence and training.”
Daniel Silva
The Other Woman

“There is no doubt that the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 created the seedbed from which ISIS sprang. And there is also no doubt that the failure to leave a residual American force in Iraq in 2011, combined with the outbreak of civil war in Syria, allowed the group to flourish and spread on two sides of an increasingly meaningless border. To dismiss the group as “un-Islamic” or “not a state” is wishful thinking and, ultimately, counterproductive and dangerous.”
Daniel Silva
The Black Widow

“There was a time when novelists wrote narrative and journalists were content to report facts.”
Daniel Silva
Portrait of a Spy

“There was a time with novelists wrote narrative and journalists were content to report facts. And the facts are quite simple. There exists in the world today an organize force that seeks to weaken or even destroy the West through acts of indiscriminate violence. This force is part of a broader radical movement to impose sharia law and restore the Islamic Caliphate. And no amount of wishful thinking will make it go away. – Adrian Carter”
Daniel Silva
Portrait of a Spy

“There was not one member of the team whose life had not been altered by the longest hatred.”
Daniel Silva
The Order

“There was nothing more dangerous, he thought, than a patient man.”
Daniel Silva
House of Spies

“They arrived in Copenhagen aboard private jets and roared through its quaint streets in armored limousines powered by internal combustion engines. Perhaps one day the oil would run out and the planet would grow too hot to sustain human life. But for now at least, the extractors of fossil fuels still reigned supreme.”
Daniel Silva
The English Girl

“They really were insufferable, she thought, these pampered millennial snowflakes with their yoga mats and their designer leggings and their contempt for concepts such as hard work and competition. She only wished she’d brought along a packet of L&Bs. One whiff of smoke would have sent them scurrying.”
Daniel Silva
The Other Woman

“They sat in an awkward, embarrassed silence for a moment, the way Englishmen are apt to do after sharing private thoughts.”
Daniel Silva
The Unlikely Spy

“This is what happens when you send an Irishman to do a Russian’s job.”
Daniel Silva
The English Spy

“Thugs the world over loved nothing more than to look down on their vassals from a balcony.”
Daniel Silva
The Cellist

“To be honest with you, I’ve always felt a little Jewish.” “You have an aversion to shellfish and German opera?” “I was speaking in a spiritual sense.” “You’re a professional assassin, Keller.”
Daniel Silva
The English Girl

“To our fate. We would never have come back to this land if we weren’t pushed here by the hatred of Europe’s Christians, and now that we’re here, they won’t let us fight, lest we antagonize the Arabs in their midst.”
Daniel Silva
Prince of Fire

“To understand Russia today, you must understand the trauma of the nineties. Everything we had, everything we had been told, was swept away. We went from superpower to basket case overnight.” (Daniel Silva Quotes)
Daniel Silva
Moscow Rules

“Vicary had decided he wanted to contribute. He wanted to do something instead of watching the world through his well-guarded window.”
Daniel Silva
The Unlikely Spy

“We are tempted to think that we have reached the end of history, that it can never happen again. But history is made every day, sometimes by men of evil. And all too often, history repeats itself. (Holy Father, the Pope)”
Daniel Silva
The Fallen Angel

“We dare to fight back, and the terrorists accuse us of being the real terrorists.” “It’s their secret weapon, Mikhail. Get used to it.”
Daniel Silva
The Secret Servant

“We did what we always do. We closed ranks, burned our files, and waited for the storm to pass.”
Daniel Silva
The English Spy

“We don’t always get to choose our assets, he reminded himself. Sometimes they choose us.”
Daniel Silva
House of Spies

“We will control the land of the Vatican. We will control Rome and introduce Islam in it. —SHEIKH MUHAMMAD BIN ABD AL-RAHMAN AL-ARIFI, Imam of the mosque at the King Fahd Defense Academy”
Daniel Silva
The Messenger

“We’ve known for some time that the peace conferences have become a meeting space for Al-Qaeda operatives and European extremists of both the left-wing and right-wing variety. – Ari Shamron”
Daniel Silva
The Messenger

“When counterterrorism officers feel optimism, innocent people usually end up dead. – Gabriel Allon”
Daniel Silva
Portrait of a Spy

“When you’re dealing with Switzerland, Mr. Allon, it’s best to keep one thing in mind. Switzerland is not a real country. It’s a business, and it’s run like a business. It’s a business that is constantly in a defensive posture. It’s been that way for seven hundred years.”
Daniel Silva
The English Assassin

“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
Daniel Silva
The Order

“With his pewter-colored locks and sturdy jaw, Graham Seymour was the archetypal British civil servant, a man who’d been born, bred, and educated to lead. He was handsome, but not too; he was tall, but not remarkably so. He made others feel inferior, especially Americans.”
Daniel Silva
The English Spy

“Yes, one could prepare, one could strive, one could make choices, but ultimately life was an elaborate game of providence and probability.”
Daniel Silva
The Cellist

“You exist in this place, you sleep peacefully in this land tonight, because of people like me.”
Daniel Silva
The Black Widow

“You know the old Russian proverb, Allon. What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine.”
Daniel Silva
The Cellist

“You know where everything is. You practically live here now.” Shamron muttered something in Polish about the ingratitude”
Daniel Silva
The English Girl

“You would have a better chance of slowing the rise of the seas than bringing democracy to Russia.”
Daniel Silva
The Cellist

“Your system (Russia) allows for no viable opposition, and, without a viable opposition, there can be no democracy. – Sarah Crawford”
Daniel Silva
Moscow Rules