Timothy Garton Ash Quotes

Europe has a lot of problems when there are sudden decisions to take.

The next Euro-elections will be a step towards a United States of Europe

This is one of the gravest crises Europe has ever experienced... An agreement failed because of the completely stubborn attitudes of the UK and the Netherlands.

I was much an enemy to monarchies before I came to Europe. I am ten thousand times more so, since I have seen what they are. There is scarcely an evil known in these countries, which may not be traced to their king, as its source, nor a good, which is not derived from the small fibres of republicanism existing among them.

It's a really weird feeling when you write something and you really know it and then you watch actors come in and do it.

The Americans are trying to expand their influence in the world, particularly in Europe. They are defending their own interests, not ours.

To write history is as important as to make history. It is an unchanging truth that if the writer does not remain true to the maker, then it takes on a quality that will confuse humanity.

The songs I was writing still had lyrics or sentiments that didn't match what I was feeling. It was old, negative energy coming out of me still, but it needed to all get out so I could trash those songs and put them in the bin. And then I was able to let the new songs out.

In Europe public men do resign. But here it's a lost art. You have to impeach 'em.

It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right. Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him.

Journalism is an extraordinary and terrible privilege. Not by chance, if you are aware of it, does it consume you with a hundred feelings of inadequacy. Not by chance, when I find myself going through an event or an important encounter, does it seize me like anguish, a fear of not having enough eyes and enough ears and enough brains to look and listen and understand like a worm hidden in the wood of history.

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.

The Iraq War is the first war in history, in which there were huge demonstrations before the war was launched, not beginning five years later and then being broken up. All of these are changes, and the people who are writing in journals today lived through these changes.

Europe is the most complicated place, in my opinion.

Write to register history, and name each thing. Write what should not be forgotten.

The entire European Union is a left-wing dream

In Europe, nothing is certain except death and welfare, and why let the former get in the way of the latter?

We will have to create an avant-garde.... We could have a Union for the enlarged Europe, and a Federation for the avant-garde.

Composing is a natural fit. As far as the creative process goes, I'd rather do this than anything else, by far. Something different happened to me when I started to write music to images. It was a feeling of excitement and connection and a sense of being in the right place that I never had before.

I like to see people reaching back for the roots and for the reason why. Not intellectually, but just for the gut feeling of what it's all about.

Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.

In Europe, populism is sort of a dirty word, but we have this wonderful history of populism in America, including the abolitionist populists and the white and black populists working together in the nineteenth century.

Writing about unknown people means I spend a lot of time arguing to the reader about why it's worth knowing about them. That's challenging, but then the piece is pure discovery.

Never write a letter if you can help it, and never destroy one!