For success, the author must make the reader care about the destiny of the principals, and sustain this anxiety, or suspense, for about 100,000 words.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

Why do you have to be the same as the others? ...Most of them are stupid.

She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly.

When you've lost everything, you've got nothing to lose.

Having faith in God did not mean sitting back and doing nothing. It meant believing you would find success if you did your best honestly and energetically.

The CIA's research program is described in a book called "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate."

Trusting someone was like holding a little water in your cupped hands - it was so easy to spill the water, and you could never get it back.

The degradation to which you subject others comes back, sooner or later, to haunt you.

In my books, women often solve the problem. Even if the woman is not the hero, she's a strong character. She does change the plot. She'll often rescue the male character from some situation.

In both cases, weakness and scruples had defeated strength and ruthlessness.

The capacity of passion is both cruel and divine

Entrepreneurs build ladders, employees climb them.

Religion, it is true, still possesses the huge if cumbersome and unwieldy advantage of having come first.

There is a virtue in shamelessness.

When you take the R sound out of French accent, and you just replace it with an R, it sounds Mexican.

There's two things you need to know. One, that you won't quit on yourself, and two, that I've done the work.

Anywhere I can ski in the morning and sell a movie in the afternoon is good.

A man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.

I can't come up with any good reason why they [the INS] would unilaterally disarm.

I'm pro responsible choice. You know, there is choice to abstain, choice to do contraception. There are all kinds of good choices