Tom Clancy Quotes

I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.

Books and movies are different art forms with different rules. And because of that, they never translate exactly.

The human condition today is better than it's ever been, and technology is one of the reasons for that.

Giving your book to Hollywood is like turning your daughter over to a pimp.

An overnight success is ten years in the making.

When you have stopped learning you have begun to die.

Every person you meet - and everything you do in life - is an opportunity to learn something.

Success will ruin your life.

Life was such a strange thing, so permanent when one had it, so fleeting when it was lost- and those who lost it could never tell you what it was like, could they?

Things rarely happen for a single reason. Even the cleverest and most skilled manipulators recognize that their real art lies in making use of that which they cannot predict.

Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if "X" happened? That's how you start.

Privacy and loneliness were the traditional luxuries accorded to a skipper.

Bill Clinton is a man who thinks international affairs means dating a girl from out of town.

I just finished reading the Koran, and there's nothing in there I didn't hear in Sunday school.

It's not right to say that our loss in Vietnam turned out to be a gain. But lessons were learned. And they were the right lessons.

Learn to write the same way you learn to play golf. You do it and keep doing it until you get it right.

Liberation and equal-rights issues notwithstanding, it was a man's job to make a woman feel cherished and respected.

I've been telling people for 12 years that if you want to get a nuclear device into the United States, just bring it through the port of Miami disguised as cocaine.

The difference between me and you is that I do good fiction.

Remember, for every shot you fire, someone, somewhere, is making money.

She didn't strike me as a "crossword in ink" kind of girl

Speak your dialogue out loud. If it sounds like the way people talk, then write it down.

Well, It's a Communist country, and the Communists do not reward personal initiative...except by execution.

The general difference between conservatives and liberals is that liberals like pretty pictures and conservatives like to build bridges that people can drive across.

My life is a very simple life thank you

"Literature" is written material that, 100 years after the death of the author, is forced upon high school students.

I don't discuss works in progress.

When I go to peoples' houses I like to sneak into their bedrooms and try on their underwear.

The only person who has artistic control is the director, and 'director' is how you spell God in Hollywood.

Even true believers had consciences, Too bad.

The first rumors about Zenith came from the Czechoslovakians.

If you don't write the book, the book ain't gonna get written.

It is a principle of diplomacy that one must know something of the truth in order to lie convincingly.

I'd rather talk to people who do things than complain about other people who do things. I say they're idiots.

Anti-Catholicism is the last respectable prejudice. You can't hate black people anymore, of course, and you can't hate homosexuals anymore, but you can hate all the Catholics you want.

To Ronald Wilson Regan, The Fortieth President of The United States: The Man Who Won The War.

Civilians listened to officers, which said a lot about the intelligence of civilians.

I write strictly for fun... as long as it stays fun I'll continue to do it.

All field agents have some cowboy in them – even the ones from New York.

Wars are begun by frightened men. They fear war, but more than that, they fear what will happen if they don't start one or take equivalent action, I suppose.

I'm a spy. It's not really... I worked for the CIA 15 years. The cover was I worked for the insurance business.

Surviving is much more painful than death.

if you don't write it down, then it never happened

Danger confronted properly is not something a man must fear.

If you don't write it down, it never happened.Cathy (& Jack) Ryan

The extraneous duties, in a sense, were the job.

You couldn't allow yourself to get bored. THAT would be a fight.

Poor people have poor options. Chavez found the Army almost by accident, and had found it a true open of security and opportunity and fellowship and respect.

I inherited curiosity from my Dad.