Eric Ambler Quotes

United Kingdom, Writer
June 28, 1909 – October, 22, 1998.

Eric Clifford Ambler OBE was an influential English author of thrillers, in particular spy novels, who introduced a new realism to the genre. He also worked as a screenwriter. Ambler used the pseudonym Eliot Reed for books co-written with Charles Rodda.

A person who searched rooms, brandished pistols, dangled promises of half a million franc fees for nameless services and then wrote instructions to Polish spies might reasonably be regarded with suspicion. But suspicion of what?

Eric Ambler
Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through it.

Eric Ambler
- Way
- Lie
- Bullshit

Yet, when these facts are seen side by side with other facts in the case, it is difficult not to become lost in superstitious awe. Their very absurdity seems to prohibit the use of the words 'chance' and 'coincidence.' For the sceptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman Law, it is administered with sub-human inefficiency.

Eric Ambler
For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency.

Eric Ambler
In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner.

Eric Ambler
The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet.

Eric Ambler
International business may conduct its operations with scraps of paper, but the ink it uses is human blood.

Eric Ambler
- Business
- Paper
- Scraps
Good' did not triumph. 'Evil' did not triumph. The two resolved, destroyed each other and created new 'evils', new 'goods' which slew each other in their turn.

Eric Ambler

Reality is always so obstructive.

Eric Ambler
- Reality