Quotes by Martin Smith

• I've got a book of poetry by the bed, one of these big collections that goes back to the Greeks and Romans.
• But at the same time I went down into the mines with working miners who are still young men, younger than I am, who are aware that their working life is coming to an end and they feel suddenly cut off.
• 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.
• 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.
• There is a huge antipathy in England between the north and the south, the working class and the owning class.
• The great thing about being a writer is that you are always recreating yourself.
• The government is shutting down the coal industry, they say it's cheaper to draw nuclear power off the French grid and cheaper to buy coal from Colombia.
• 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.
• The fact is that I loved being in England.
• Most people - and particularly people whose lives have nothing to do with books at all - are intrigued by the idea that somebody wants to listen to them and get it right.
• 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.
• I've always been struck by how unsuspicious people are in general, if you tell them what you're about.
• I'm very aware when I'm speaking to the English of how flat my Mid-Atlantic American voice is.
• I'd always been a great fan of George Orwell.
• I never thought I would just be doing Arkady books.
• I have another Russian idea, too, with a place and a period, so I guess I have enough to keep me busy for quite some time, especially considering that I'm such a slow writer.
• I feel very bad about getting things wrong.
• As a novelist, I tell stories and people give me money. Then financial planners tell me stories and I give them money.
• Remember, you're never too old to set a new goal or dream a new dream.
• Life is like a camera: focus on what's important, capture the good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don't turn out, just take another shot.