"It was the most romantic plane ever made"
About this Quote
Calling a machine “the most romantic” flips the usual script: romance is supposed to belong to people, not rivets. Ken Follett’s line works because it smuggles desire and nostalgia into the cold geometry of technology, turning engineering into a proxy for intimacy. “Ever made” is the sly exaggeration that seals it. It’s not an objective claim; it’s a character’s emotional verdict, the kind you make when memory has edited the film and left only the glow.
Follett, a novelist who thrives on high-stakes settings and clean, propulsive symbolism, uses the plane as shorthand for an era when speed and risk felt glamorous. Depending on the book’s scene, “romantic” can mean several loaded things at once: the promise of escape, the thrill of transgression, the fantasy of reinvention at 30,000 feet. Planes compress time and distance; they also compress consequences. You board, and the old life becomes physically smaller beneath you. That’s romantic in the way spycraft and wartime affairs are romantic: morally complicated, aesthetically irresistible.
There’s also a gendered, cultural subtext in fetishizing a plane as romance’s pinnacle. It nods to the classic 20th-century idea that masculinity plus machinery equals destiny, while quietly admitting that what’s being loved isn’t just a person, but the feeling of being swept up by history. Follett isn’t praising aviation as much as he’s naming the seduction of momentum: when the world is moving fast, your heart is allowed to keep up.
Follett, a novelist who thrives on high-stakes settings and clean, propulsive symbolism, uses the plane as shorthand for an era when speed and risk felt glamorous. Depending on the book’s scene, “romantic” can mean several loaded things at once: the promise of escape, the thrill of transgression, the fantasy of reinvention at 30,000 feet. Planes compress time and distance; they also compress consequences. You board, and the old life becomes physically smaller beneath you. That’s romantic in the way spycraft and wartime affairs are romantic: morally complicated, aesthetically irresistible.
There’s also a gendered, cultural subtext in fetishizing a plane as romance’s pinnacle. It nods to the classic 20th-century idea that masculinity plus machinery equals destiny, while quietly admitting that what’s being loved isn’t just a person, but the feeling of being swept up by history. Follett isn’t praising aviation as much as he’s naming the seduction of momentum: when the world is moving fast, your heart is allowed to keep up.
Quote Details
| Topic | Romantic |
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